Everybody Knows
by jeffwik
Summary: When he learns Annie won't be returning to Greendale in the fall after all, Jeff takes dramatic steps in an attempt to move on. (Spoiler alert: it doesn't work.) (Due to the site removing my ability to log in to my prior account, this turned out to be necessary.)
1. You Know How He Can Be

She wasn't coming back at the end of the summer.

Or, she was, but only for a weekend to settle things up, then it was back to the FBI.

He tried to feign surprise at this — an internship of the sort she'd had leading to an offer of full-time employment was an extremely rare beast — but some part of him said of course.

Of course she would excel.

Of course she would impress.

Of course she would, once finally full out of the cocoon that was Greendale, burst forth to conquer the world.

He would have been disappointed if she'd come back.

He would have been relieved, of course. Hell, he would have been thrilled, and odds were that he wouldn't have done a very good job of hiding it. Britta referred to the night Annie had made the announcement as the night he'd had a nervous breakdown, right there in front of everyone. But he would have been disappointed, too, because he expected better of her. And while he'd let her down more than once, she'd never done the same to him.

His circle of friends had pared down by the time he got the news she wouldn't be coming back: Duncan, Britta, Craig, and Frankie. She was all giddy when she told him, like it was good news. Because, of course, it was.

After he got off the phone with her he looked at himself in the mirror, and he didn't like what he saw. This was nothing new, on one level. He'd never been especially fond of himself. After a flirtation with being a professional monster, he'd settled into the role of sad sack and failure with an energy and vigor usually associated with success. He had a job he hated at a school synonymous with disappointment. He'd missed whatever shot he'd had with the woman he loved by being too far up his own ass to act, and telling himself it was noble. He'd failed at nearly everything he'd ever tried – at least, the things that had been important to him.

This is what he was thinking, when he looked at himself in the mirror the day after the news. She wasn't coming back. She was gone. He had failed at everything, up to and including ruining her life.

And in that thought he found solace. No matter what he did now, no act of his could change the fact that he'd known someone remarkable, and that she was going to be remarkable out there in the world, and even that he had, in some tiny way, been responsible for her becoming the remarkable woman she was.

Nothing he did mattered any more; she was gone.

He was free.

* * *

"…Dean dean dean went the trolley, dean dean dean went the bell…" Craig Pelton sang to himself as he filled out yet another form. At times he suspected Frankie just made up paperwork to keep him busy, because when he was filling out forms he wasn't getting in her way while she ran Greendale. But most of the forms seemed legit. The one he was filling out at that moment, for instance: a copy of the city's new twenty-part submission packet for getting permission to designate some of the parking spots in the main lot as being for the handicapped, which Frankie had dropped off that morning. The sudden uptick in elaborate documentation required by even the most banal of administrative tasks had corresponded with the start of Frankie Dart's tenure as Greendale Community College's chief operations manager, which Craig thought of as an exceptionally fortunate coincidence. Without her, he doubted he could have kept up with all of the new paperwork; even with her, it kept him busy almost all day, almost every day.

He was filling out page eight of the packet Frankie had given him for the day: listing the colors of the rainbow in order of preference. The exercise that had taken most of the morning, as he kept changing his mind as to whether orange was his fifth-favorite color, or whether it was his sixth-favorite under indigo.

Craig glanced up as Jeff Winger strode into his office, then dropped his pencil as he did a double take. Jeff had gotten a shave and a haircut. He wore a crisp blue button-down shirt, and there was a spark in his eye that Craig hadn't seen since before he'd turned forty.

"Jeffrey!" Craig cried. He started to spring up out of his chair, ready to join Jeff in whatever strange crusade he was launching, but something in Jeff's pose kept him in his seat. "What can I do for you?"

"I quit," Jeff said.

"What?" Craig was aghast. "Jeffrey, why? Do you want more money? I can't give you more money! There isn't any, and even if there was, Frankie took away the checkbook!"

Jeff snorted. "I… no, you deserve to know. You've been a good friend. Annie's not coming back. They offered her a job at the FBI."

Craig boggled. "Are you going to follow her to Washington, DC? That's insane and romantic and I'm so jealous!"

"Hell, no." Jeff shook his head. "I'll probably never see her again, just like Troy and Shirley and Abed and everyone else who leaves. But knowing she's gone forever is a wake-up call. I've been here, wallowing, in this place where aspirations go to die, eking out tiny, tiny slivers of satisfaction. I'm tired of drinking to numb myself enough to get to the point where I'm able to pretend I'm okay with my life. I quit."

Craig blinked back tears. He searched his brain for reasons Jeff couldn't do this. "But… but… the fall semester starts next week! Someone needs to teach your classes, you can't just —"

"Please." Jeff scowled, the wicked gleam still in his eye. "A monkey could teach my classes. It's all DVDs and multiple choice. Get one of the cafeteria workers to do it. Or Frankie can probably find a better-qualified law professor who actually wants to be here, maybe because of a stroke or an anxiety disorder. My point is I don't care."

"But you love Greendale!" Craig cried desperately.

"Again, hell no. I love some people who are mostly gone now, and I should follow their example. Greendale is a crutch, and if I'm ever going to regain my self-respect, step one is getting rid of the crutch."

"What… what are you going to do?" The dean whimpered like a kicked puppy.

Jeff's eyes lit up even more. "I have no idea! But I know where I'm going to do it — not here!" Jeff turned to leave, but stopped… something held him back.

Specifically, Craig held him back — the dean had climbed over his desk and hugged Jeff around the waist from behind, trying to drag him down. "You can't go!"

"Stop literalizing the metaphor!" Jeff shouted.

* * *

"Where are you going to go?"

"See, that's the beautiful thing, here. It doesn't matter."

Jeff grinned wildly as he stuffed what few belongings he cared about into the trunk and back seat of his car. Duncan was, in theory, there to help him, but he'd spent most of the day shaking his head in wonder and asking the same few questions over and over.

Yes Jeff's burst of energy arose from the revelation that Annie had been offered a permanent position with the FBI.

No Jeff was not going anywhere near Washington, DC.

No Jeff had no expectation of ever seeing Annie again.

Yes Jeff was serious about leaving Colorado.

Yes Jeff had a plan.

No Jeff wasn't going to share it.

"Not right away. I've got to get my head screwed on straight," he told Duncan for the fourth or fifth time. Also the part about him having a plan was, while not exactly a lie, definitely an exaggeration. He had an idea for a plan.

"I feel like we should call Britta," Duncan suggested. "Sit down, have a few drinks, figure this whole thing out."

"I've already talked to Britta," Jeff said, as he slammed the trunk closed. "Last night. This is it. I'm going. I'll be back," he reassured Duncan. "At some point, definitely. Probably." He cackled. "Maybe."

"Jeffrey, I'm not any better a psychologist than you are a lawyer, but I am your friend. And I wholeheartedly support you making positive changes in your life, don't get me wrong. I think it's great you want to leave Greendale, I think it's great you want to take decisive action…"

"Thank you, Ian," Jeff said with genuine warmth. "I appreciate it. And I'll be in touch."

"But right this moment you seem to be suffering some kind of —"

"Suffering? No. Enjoying. I am enjoying what very probably constitutes a manic episode." Jeff grasped Duncan firmly by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. "But I have to change my life or I am going to drown in frisbees and scotch and recrimination. I need to deal with my problems."

* * *

"See, this is just you running away from your problems, not dealing with them. You think you're being proactive, but wherever you go, you're still going to be stuck with yourself."

"I liked you better when you were high all the time," Jeff grumbled. "Hand it over."

Britta squinted at him from the doorway of the apartment that had, once upon a time, been Annie's. "You need to work on you. Throwing your life into disarray is just going to… you're just making a mess."

Jeff folded his arms. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm crazy. But I need to do something. I have to do something. If I keep on my current track, I'm going to end up like Pierce, miserable and alone and deluded. Except I'm also going to be poor, so Pierce would actually have that on me. Hand it over."

"Hand what over?"

Jeff glared at her.

"Okay, fine." She turned and headed into the apartment, stomping sullenly towards a box on the kitchen counter. "I'm going to tell her you stole it, though," Britta said over her shoulder as Jeff followed her in.

"You stole it from me."

"She asked me to! And you stole it from the trophy case…"

"It's in here?" Jeff pulled the box open, ripping tape. He peered down into it, and hesitated. It was there, in the nice frame that he'd always assumed Annie had set it in: a clipping from the Greendale Gazette Journal Mirror: "Debate Team Champs!" The frame was half-hidden by photographs, mementos, pins and pens. Six years of memories, in a convenient container.

Britta scowled at him. "She also said you weren't returning her calls, which, again, super unhealthy."

"I'm cancelling my phone. Getting a new number. I'll let you know. Eventually." As though he were reaching into a vat of acid, Jeff gingerly thrust his hand into the box of history and pulled the framed clipping out.

"You're changing your number, cutting ties, moving… all to get a fresh start, and you're taking this with you?" Britta threw up her hands. "This is exactly what I'm talking about — you can't not self-sabotage!"

"This isn't self-sabotage," Jeff retorted. "This is… this," he said, holding up the clipping, "is important to me. It's…" He swallowed. "It's important."

* * *

"It's amazing!" Annie's eyes were bright. "Can you believe it?"

"Barely," Britta said. She and Annie embraced again.

Almost exactly twenty-four hours after Britta had watched Jeff drive away, Annie's flight had landed. They stood under the fluorescent lights of the baggage claim, waiting for her luggage. Annie looked lively, in a way Britta hadn't seen on her in a long time. "I can barely believe it myself, they don't usually make an offer at the end of the internship and I didn't even think I impressed them that much and in three years I can apply to the FBI Academy and God, it's just amazing!" She chuckled… no, she giggled. She giggled like a schoolgirl.

Britta laughed too, happy to see her so happy. "Yeah…"

Then Annie shifted gears with a precision that was almost chilly. "So what's the deal with Jeff?"

"Hmm?" Britta hoped she sounded more surprised than panicked.

"Jeff Winger." Annie raised an eyebrow. "Six foot four, early forties, takes his shirt off at the drop of a hat, kind of scruffy? Suddenly stopped returning my calls because he's being a baby?" There was a brittleness there, underlying Annie's jocular tone — Britta had known her for years enough to recognize when she was feigning casualness. The glee that had been so strong in her voice had vanished suddenly and completely.

"Yeah…" Britta glanced down at her shoes. "What happened there?"

Annie glanced around, as though concerned someone might be listening in. "It's stupid," she said. "I told him about the job thirty seconds after I found out. I thought he'd be happy for me. He said he was, and then he said he had to go, we'd talk later. That was the day before yesterday. I texted him, nothing. I tried to call him last night, but his phone was disconnected, which… I know he's…" She sighed. "You know how he can be."

Britta opened her mouth to reply, thought about it a moment, and closed her mouth again. She nodded.

Annie gave Britta a yeah, exactly sort of look. "I called Frankie, but she refused to say anything about Jeff. Which was weird." She made a face. "So what is it that Frankie didn't want to tell me?"

"Well…" Britta struggled to find a good way to put it, and, coming up dry, went with a bad way instead. "Jeff's gone. He went kind of crazy yesterday. He quit his job and moved out of his apartment."

Annie looked at Britta like she'd grown a second head. "What? Where is he?"

"I don't know!" Seeing Annie's expression, Britta threw up her hands in exasperation. "Honest! I don't."

* * *

Jeff had to wait almost ten minutes, but it wasn't like he had anything else to be doing. There was really just the one guy from before Greendale that he could plausibly reach out to. He lounged in a corner booth, drank coffee, and read a newspaper while he waited. Around the time he finished reading the opinion pages and grumbling at what idiots all the columnists were, he finally got the call back. The voice on the other end of the line was warm and friendly and apologetic. "Jeff Winger! Sorry to make you wait, I had a client on the land line. What the hell can I do for you?"

"Mark, hi…" Jeff tossed the newspaper down, the better to concentrate on the conversation.

"Call me Cash, Tango!" Mark sounded well. Jeff could easily imagine him, feet up on his desk, playing with his pencil the way he'd used to, ten years back when they'd shared an office. "What's the good word? It's been, what, two years? Three? Have you finally shaken that school off?"

Jeff chuckled, only slightly nervously. "Yeah, actually. That's exactly why I'm calling you. I have shaken that school off like it was a head cold and I just drank a gallon of orange juice."

"Awesome, buddy. I can guess why you're calling, and I'm sorry." Mark's tone turned apologetic. "The answer's got to be no."

Jeff winced, but his voice never wavered. "Mark, Cash, I wasn't expecting you to hire me on the basis of —"

"Wait, hire you?" Mark sounded dumbfounded. "You mean to say Tango doesn't have something lined up?"

"Of course I… wait, what did you think I was asking?"

"I figured you wanted to use my Broncos box to schmooze somebody! I gave it up when I, you know, relocated out of Denver. Who're you looking to schmooze, though," he asked seriously, "because I do know a guy and I can get you last-minute opera tickets…"

"Cash! Cash, slow down. Here's my situation. Ready?"

"Shoot."

"One. I'm unemployed as of yesterday and I need to get the hell out of Colorado. Two. There is no second thing."

Mark let out a low whistle. "Bad breakup?"

"No. Kind of. There's a woman involved, but it's all in the past."

"Well, I'm glad you thought of me, buddy."

"Great. I need a favor, if you're willing. You've got to put some feelers out on my behalf. Me cold-calling and saying 'hey, I'm that guy they wrote the magazine article about who faked his degrees and went to community college, et cetera,' that's not going to win me any points with anyone."

"Christ, Jeff, I can do better than that — you want a job?"

Jeff nearly did a spit-take with his coffee, which fortunately there was no one there to see. "What?"

"Offer I made you back in the day still stands," Mark continued. "You'd have to move, obviously, but I'm hearing some subtle indications you might be amenable to that."

Jeff sat bolt upright in his seat. "Are you serious?"

"Absolutely! Mostly. I'm not a solo boat — we'll have to convince the partners to get you on board, but we're in an expansionary phase right now anyway, we were talking about lateral hires and there's no one I'd rather bring in at the non-equity partner level…"

"Non-equity?" Jeff repeated wryly.

"Buddy. You've been out of it for years and your degree is from a community college," Mark pointed out. "But don't worry, Tango, I'll take care of you. This is me jumping at the chance to get you on my team, is what this is. How fast can you be out here?"

Jeff considered. He'd left Thursday so that he'd be well gone before her flight came in. It was Friday evening now. By this point Annie would have landed. She must know he'd fled by now. Jeff wondered whether she understood. Probably she was angry… he ruthlessly repressed that line of thought as immaterial to the matter at hand. "I'm at a restaurant in Peoria right now —"

"Peoria? Illinois? What the hell are you doing in Illinois?"

"Calling you! Sitting waiting for you to call me back." Jeff shook his head. "I needed to get distance between me and… and there. Listen, I'll drive it and be in your office, spit-shined, first thing Monday morning."

"Make it third thing — no one's in until ten. Or actually, no, come to my house when you get here. I've got a guest room you can use until you find a place."

"Cash, I don't need to…"

"I insist!" Mark said, as Jeff had known he would. "I'll text you the address. Get in early enough Sunday and I'll make you dinner, or lunch, I don't know, whatever… and Jeff? Real sorry to hear about the thing with the girl, whatever it was."


	2. I Left Her a Note

Annie insisted Britta take her to Jeff's before her own apartment.

"I'm telling you, he's not there."

"I believe you," she said absently, staring out the passenger-side window at the scenery of Greendale, Colorado. When she'd first gone to DC she'd nearly gotten lost so many times, because for the first time in her life there wasn't a giant mountain range on the western horizon orienting her. The mountains were familiar, and their absence exciting, but she'd missed them when they were gone and she was glad to see they, at least, had stayed there waiting for her.

"We can't even get in, I don't have a key…"

"I have a key." On her keyring Annie currently had four keys, none of which were relevant to her impending future: one to the apartment that had once been Troy and Abed's, one to the Greendale Community College library building, one to Jeff's apartment, and one to the two-bedroom she'd sublet half of, back in DC.

Britta did a double take. "When did you get a key to Jeff Winger's apartment?"

"Years ago." Annie tried to remember. "When we were retaking biology and Troy was moved out. Jeff went away for a weekend and I had to water his plants," she added, a little defensively.

"For one weekend away? He had plants?"

"It was years ago," Annie repeated. "You remember how we were." Right up until he decided to marry you, she didn't add.

Britta said something in reply that Annie didn't catch, distracted as she was by the memories. For years she and Jeff had danced around one another. There were no other men for her, and she could count on one hand with all the fingers left over the number of other women Jeff had expressed any interest in, after sophomore year or so. They'd never quite been a couple but they'd shared something. Something that had ended, quietly, when Jeff had dealt with the threatened shuttering of Greendale by reaching out not to her, but to Britta. 'Reaching out' was an understatement – he'd gotten engaged to her.

That had been the final straw; after it happened Annie and Jeff really were just friends, as he'd so often claimed. She moved on. There was only so much waiting around you could do before it stopped feeling romantic and started feeling like you were being an idiot.

They'd never talked about it; why start then? He'd felt the change, though, she was sure. He'd spent their sixth year at Greendale moping and flagrantly teaching poorly as if to draw her out… and then, the night she'd announced her internship, he'd expressed so much regret, and then they'd kissed…

Annie had meant for that kiss to be the closing of a book. She'd moved on from Jeff; she'd accepted and internalized the fact that they were never going to happen. It was supposed to have been a kiss goodbye, a way to for both of them to acknowledge the what-might-have-been and let it go. And really, that's all the kiss had been.

It was the look in his eyes in the instant after the kiss that had melted her. As their friends had barged in she'd been suddenly and against her will catapulted back to freshman year — it felt like a lifetime ago — and the handsome, charming man who'd looked at her like she was worth looking at. She'd remembered all the other times they'd almost kissed, times they'd cuddled, times they'd exchanged looks and smiles and… and in a rush all those old feelings had returned. For him, too, she could tell…

It had been a terrible time to start anything, of course. She was about to go, Abed was leaving, she'd spent a full year being completely over him, and neither of them knew what the hell they were doing. For the week between that kiss and her flight out, though, it was like old times. The Halloween they'd done sort-of couples costumes, and all their friends knew better than to comment on it. The time they'd basically co-hosted a holiday party at his apartment. All the times that they'd teamed up for paintball or lava world or the Greendale-wide games of freeze tag and capture the flag…

It was like old times, too, in that they didn't talk about it. As though looking directly at the thing would make the illusion melt away, as though it were too flimsy and delicate to stand up to scrutiny. The week before she boarded the plane out, when she was busy packing and planning, they'd managed to spend an awful lot of time lightly flirting, a lot of time on low-key almost-kisses. Nothing new, really. Just a return to form, really. And then they'd kissed goodbye again at the airport in a way that had felt like they'd done it a thousand times before and would do it ten thousand times again.

And yes, they'd been texting all summer. She'd exchanged a few texts with Abed and Britta. Troy, too, a couple of times. But the conversation with Jeff had been that mix of intimate and casual, the way they'd used to communicate, back in the days of pillows and blankets.

But as much as part of her wanted to live in Jeff Winger's arms forever, another part of her resented it. They'd texted so much because they both liked just interacting with one another, but they couldn't stay in that bubble forever. Things had changed between them and would continue to change, inevitably. Maybe that was why they'd avoided talking about the changed energy between them. They'd both always known that she was going to leave Greendale eventually, Jeff's fantasy about her becoming a forensics professor notwithstanding. Over the course of the summer, though, whenever Annie started to get too condemnatory about him and her and them, she'd remember the look in his eyes after that kiss, and the way she'd felt when they'd kissed goodbye: loved.

She enjoyed his company, it was as simple as that. They were a stunningly effective team, or could be, but it wasn't just about effectiveness. All the things they'd done together had been more fun because they'd done them together. Things that wouldn't have been at all pleasant without him beside her had become cherished memories. He was clever and drove her to be more clever. He was generous and sweet, but only when he thought no one was looking. He'd always listened to her and made it clear he valued her opinion, that he valued her. His texts were little presents that made her smile.

Talk to Jeff was the first item on the list she'd made on the plane, of the stuff she needed to do before she left again. Figure it out. It didn't make sense that he'd run away like this, except it was absolutely was the kind of stupid thing he'd pull. Now she was going to have to spend time tracking him down, time she didn't have.

"Earth to Annie! Hell-o!"

"Hmm?" Annie roused from her reverie as though from a dream, blinking and puzzled. Britta had her hands cupped over her mouth and was calling to her from the driver's seat of her small car.

"We're here," Britta informed her. "Although I don't know what you expect to see."

Annie nodded tightly as she climbed out of the car. "I don't know either. You're sure he's not here?"

"He drove off with a bunch of bags in his car…" Britta shrugged. "I guess he could have come back. Oh, did I tell you he stole back that stupid framed clipping you wanted?"

Annie whirled around. "He did?"

Britta nodded. "He came over just to get it."

Well, Annie thought, that surely kills any chance that this isn't about him and me. Not that she'd had any other working hypotheses.

Just in case, she knocked three times on Jeff's apartment door. No response, so she let herself in.

"Jeff?" she called, as she figured there was a nonzero chance he was hiding. "It's me…" She flicked a light on, and recoiled at the mess. Jeff's apartment had never been homey, but it had at least been tidy. At the moment, though, it looked like it had been tossed by burglars: drawers hanging open, clothes in a big pile on the couch…

Annie took a quick inventory of what was gone. At least three of his suits were missing, plus an unknown quantity of his other clothes. All three of his phone chargers were taken, too, as was the little leather shaving kit he took with him when he traveled. His lecture notes and course materials were still here where she'd last seen them, in a cardboard box in his closet, but his laptop and its case weren't there. Bare nails poked from the wall where his diploma and his bar certification should have been.

"He took everything for a trip, and everything he couldn't easily replace," Annie announced.

"I guess." Britta followed her through the apartment, watching her examine everything and saying nothing. She raised an eyebrow when Annie dove under Jeff's bed. "What are you looking for, porn?"

"He used to have a box of keepsakes and… things," Annie said from her position on her hands and knees. Valentines and get-well cards from grade school, panties from one night stands during Jeff's one-night-stand period (she didn't like to dwell on that)… Annie waved her phone, in flashlight mode, peering into the dark space. "I don't see… ah!" With a triumphant yawp, she reached under the bed and pulled out a small envelope. ANNIE was the only thing written on it.

Annie sat crosslegged on the floor next to Jeff's bed and tore the envelope open. Within was a short letter, a note really:

Annie —

Forgive the lack of my usual eloquence but I'm in a hurry. I realized when you told me you'd gotten a job in DC that I've spent the last year, at least, either wallowing in self-pity or hanging on to an impossible fantasy. I know you need to move on and so do I. Seeing each other again at this point could only be painful. I've left and I'm pretty sure I didn't leave you any way to contact me. If I'm wrong and you can find me, which let's face it you probably can because you're my superhero, please don't. We both know you deserve better. Take whatever energy you would have expended on me, and find a decent guy and goad him into being the best he can. Maybe someday we can meet again when we've both changed enough it wouldn't be awkward.

All my love, Jeff

PS If you're not Annie, you were probably hired by my former landlord to clean out the apartment. Feel free to steal anything. The TV is a couple of generations old but there is or was a PS3 in the sideboard cabinet in the dining room.

She sat and stared at the note for a minute or two, saying nothing.

"What is it?" asked Britta.

Wordlessly Annie handed Britta the note. Then she took out her phone and texted Jeff.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1946:**

 **You could have just texted me, you know**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **Oh that's right you've changed your phone like a baby**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

"Whoa," Britta said, reading the note.

"You want his Playstation?" Annie asked her drily. Without waiting for a response she took the note back, folded it and stuffed it into her purse. "Former coworkers at his law firm," she said. "At least some of them liked him, and they scattered when the firm closed, so lots to work with there. Start with the ones he used to work most closely with. Mark Cash? That sounds wrong. Mark something…"

Britta looked at her quizzically.

"Greendale alumni," she continued, her voice thick. "Maybe not anyone from when he was a student, but some of the people who took his class last year probably remember him fondly. Former clients, from back when he was doing legal work. Doreen? He never tells Doreen anything — God, do I need to call her and tell her about this?" She sighed heavily.

Britta's puzzlement grew. "Who's Doreen?"

"His mother."

"You know his mother?" Britta's tone was incredulous.

"Not really. I met her once. Twice. Years ago." Annie rubbed her eyes. "Just to be on the safe side I need to call Abed — if he told anyone it would be Abed…" Her voice cracked, and Britta put an arm around her in support. Annie took a breath and blinked back tears. "He probably thought he wasn't ever going to make me cry again, the jerk."

* * *

The problem with solo cross-country driving was that you had plenty of time to yourself, to think. Thinking led to recrimination and regret. Jeff turned the radio up, but it wasn't enough to drown out the steadily increasing drumbeat of anxiety. He'd crashed in some side of the road motel in Nebraska Thursday night. On Friday he'd called Mark from Peoria, but he'd kept going and slept in Gary, Indiana. Saturday was one long blur. He'd hoped to make it all the way to Mark's that night but he gave up somewhere east of Pittsburgh.

Lying in a motel room and staring at the ceiling, willing himself to sleep, he couldn't help imagining what she'd say if she were there.

 _Go on and quit, quitter. 'I can't take a stab at actual emotions, I've got to run away, bluh bluh bluh,' that's you. That's what you sound like._

"It's not that," he insisted. "I don't want to hurt you any more."

 _Hurt me? When have you ever hurt me? Oh, yeah, by refusing to face facts. By denying and retreating, and gaslighting me and lying to me and running away from your feelings._

"Some of that wasn't a mistake. You were eighteen when we met. I was thirty-four. There's no possible equality there. I couldn't not take advantage of you."

 _That's so wrong I don't know where to begin. That's not true, actually, I made a list. First, calendar age isn't everything, and I was a hell of a lot more mature than you ever gave me credit for. Second, even if that was true when I was eighteen, which it wasn't, it would follow that it would be less true when I was a year older, even less true when I was a year older than that… I turn twenty-five on my next birthday. Eventually I get to be an adult._

"I'm aging too, you know, much as I would like to be a Peter Pan figure who enjoys an eternal mid-to-late-twenties-ness…"

 _Third, and this is setting aside the first two points, there's always been equality in our relationship. If anything it's tilted the other way._

Jeff scoffed. "I don't think that's true."

 _When's the last time I wanted you to do something and you didn't do it? Because I'm pretty sure you've done every single thing I've asked of you, sometimes complaining and sometimes reluctantly but always doing it, for at least the last four years. The last time you wouldn't do what I wanted was when you refused to acknowledge what was happening between us, the day I found out you'd been sleeping with Britta. Which you immediately stopped doing. Since then, what? Have you even hit on another woman once since then?_

"Once," he said weakly. "We were having a fight at the time."

 _You from 2005 would look at your total lack of a sex life and say that if you were who he'd be in ten years, kill him. Not that you should commit self-harm! I'm just saying, it's a change. You can't deny it's a change._

"I don't."

 _Look at what you're doing. You've run from me because you know if we saw each other again, I would ask you to do something. Kiss me, stay with me, sleep with me, date me, love me, and you wouldn't be able to say no._

"You'll be happier this way. This way I don't make you cry. You should be able to go off to DC and the FBI and the real world with a clear conscience. I don't want to hold you back and I don't have anything I can offer you. It's too late! I've jerked you around too long —"

 _Years too long, yes. I was over you, you know that? I was over you and we were done and I was okay with it, and you dragged me back with your stupid nervous breakdown and fantasies about us married and happy together —_

"I didn't tell you about that!"

 _I'm just a voice in your head, you goof, come on. I was over and done and ready to move on and then you kiss me like a jerk and make me want to—_

"No. No," Jeff sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. "I didn't make you, her, do anything. Real Annie wouldn't say that."

 _She wouldn't? Oh, hey, everybody gather around, the world's greatest living expert on Annie Edison is making pronouncements!_

"Annie would never blame me for her feelings or actions. She'd say she told me to kiss her, or she'd just say we kissed, and she definitely wouldn't be… isn't… mad at me for it. Not for that. I'm sure she's mad at me for this, but…"

 _Oh, no. You know I love it when people make decisions about me without talking to me first, that's like my favorite thing. But you do blame yourself, don't you? That's why you're punishing yourself like this. Yourself and Annie. And Annie, at least, deserves better._

"This is better for her. That's the whole point of this!"

 _Neither of those statements are true._

"They are!"

 _Are not._

Jeff grunted. "I left her a note."

 _That note was terrible and a mistake and she won't even find it. You should call her. Or if you can't face her voice-to-voice, get Britta or Frankie to act as a go-between. Really you should turn around and go home._

"I don't have a home."

 _You can't lie to me, I'm a voice in your head, remember? Home is wherever she is._

* * *

Annie and Britta sat at their dining room table, one last time. Annie had a legal pad in front of her, with action items she ticked off, one by one.

"Everything I'm taking is packed and boxed, ready to be shipped. I've said good-bye to Chang, Frankie, and the dean. I talked to Abed and to Jeff's mother." She paused, to gather herself for a moment. "We're on last month's rent now, and we're allegedly getting our security deposit back, unless you stay on. There's no chance you're going to end up homeless…"

"I'm going to be fine," said Britta. "I lived in New York; I can handle being alone in Greendale."

"Before you moved in here you were living in a tent," Annie reminded Britta. "And that was with secret money from your parents."

"Mistakes were made," Britta allowed. "But I'll be fine!"

Annie gave her a searching look, then turned back to her notes. "Well, I've asked Frankie to keep an eye on you, so if you have any problems you can count on her. And you have my brother's contact info —"

"Annie, I'm a grown woman!" Britta insisted.

"Of course you are." Annie patted Britta's hand. "Do you have a place lined up?"

Britta folded her arms and scowled. "I got some listings off of Craigslist. I'll be fine."

"Okay, okay."

They fell silent. Annie drummed her fingers absently on the table. "Do you happen to have maybe heard from Jeff?" she asked with exaggerated casualness.

Britta glared at Annie, then softened. "I haven't. Your investigation didn't pan out?"

Annie wouldn't meet Britta's gaze. "I decided against looking for him. If he's going to be a big super baby mister mature guy about it…"

"Well, that's Jeff Winger: always impressing. Just when you think he's bottomed out, he hits a new low." Britta snickered. She felt oddly vindicated when Annie snorted with laughter, too. If they couldn't get along on anything else, she thought with resignation, at least they could badmouth Jeff together.

"Oh, I know! You should have heard the lesson plan he was going to put together for this fall," Annie said. "You'd think the Commerce Clause was Santa's more profit-driven brother… That was a joke about constitutional law," she added, off Britta's apparent puzzlement.

"I knew that," Britta lied. "When were you and Jeff talking about his lesson plans?"

Annie shrugged. "We were talking or texting or something almost every day I was at the internship. I texted you, too," she said, a little defensively.

Britta scoffed. "You texted me maybe four times. Maybe. And since when was Jeff spending time working on a lesson plan? This past year his syllabus for all his courses was 'the class brings in DVDs and votes on which one to watch.'"

"Yeah, I know," Annie said. She stared at the tabletop in front of her. "I may have goaded him a little. You know."

Britta tried to think of something helpful to say. "You guys are weird."

"We were weird. Now we're nothing, because…" Annie grimaced. "Because first he was going to marry you, and now he can't even say goodbye to my face."

"Marry me…?" Britta looked puzzled, then surprised as she remembered. "Wow, I completely forgot about that. That was a really crazy day."

"Crazy. Yeah." Annie peered down at her notes, avoiding Britta's gaze. She picked up her pen and set it down again, twice. "It's not like we were together," she said suddenly. "But it's like… we weren't… and you go and…"

"I don't remember what I was thinking," Britta said apologetically. "I mean, I knew you two were, like, lava joust buddies…"

Annie looked up at her.

"Okay. Dumb way to say that." Britta drummed her fingers on the tabletop and bit her lip. "It was a stupid thing and a crazy day and we never talked about it. And I guess it really messed up our relationship, and I'm sorry for that."

"I know, and it's stupid, I just… thanks." Annie shook her head in disgust. "It's not like he and I ever talked about it, either," she said tightly. "So now I guess I'll just go and never see him again because apparently that's what he wants even though we didn't talk about that, either, why break a streak, and hey, my flight leaves in under two hours so there's a real narrow window for him to turn this around and between you and me and the wall I don't think he's going to pull it off." She rested her head heavily against the tabletop.

Britta patted the back of Annie's head awkwardly. "I know I'm probably the last person you want to hear from, about Jeff Winger…"

"Mmm-hmm," Annie whimpered, without moving.

"But you know, if he's going to treat you like this, fuck him, right? You've wasted a lot of energy on —"

"I know!"

"And there's plenty of guys who —"

"I know!"

"And he is, frankly, not the —"

"I know!" Annie lifted her head and sat up in her seat. "But I do appreciate hearing someone else say it. We haven't always gotten along, but… thanks."

"Girls?" Britta offered hopefully.

"Girls," agreed Annie. They embraced, awkwardly.

"I love you, but this feels weird," said Britta.

"Yeah, it does," Annie said with a sigh. They pulled apart. "Okay, that was sweet and all, but we really need to go to the airport now."


	3. She's Not My Ex!

Early afternoon on Sunday Jeff reached Mark's house in Newton, an upscale suburb to the west of the city. He could have been there earlier, but he took a little extra time cleaning himself up first; no reason to make a bad impression. He hadn't seen Mark in a few years and it was important that things go well. He'd thought about going so far as to change into his least-rumpled suit, but decided that would be gilding the lily. Mark had sounded thrilled to hear from him, after all.

 _Man's doing well for himself_ , Jeff thought as he surveyed Mark's home. A half hour from the city center, even closer to Fenway Park. Big lawn with a lot of trees, at least three bedrooms. It occurred to him to wonder whether Mark had married. If he had kids. Why he'd shut down his practice in Colorado (thriving, by all accounts) to relocate two time zones over and sign onto Biddle, Heath, Johnson & Clay. All questions that, no doubt, had answers…

There were two cars in the open garage and one parked in the driveway already. Jeff pulled in next to the third car. Late-model BMW, he noted. Local license plate. Made his worn Lexus look dingy by comparison, but if things went well he'd be able to upgrade.

No answer when he rang the bell, so Jeff tried calling Mark's cell.

He picked up immediately. "Hey, buddy, where are you? No problems I hope?"

Jeff was struck again by how eager Mark sounded. "At your front door," he said, "unless I have the wrong house…"

"Oh, great! We're in the back yard — just come around."

"Sure," Jeff said, already walking around the side of the house. And there Mark was, holding his phone to his ear and grinning like he'd just won a trivia contest.

"Tango!" he cried, hanging up and extending his arms for an embrace. "God, it's good to see you!"

"Hey, Cash," Jeff said. Seven years ago he'd have ducked Mark's hug. Three years ago he'd have cringed. But after all his time at Greendale, Jeff Winger had become a man inured to casual hugging. He accepted and returned the embrace. "You're looking good," he said, and meant it — Mark had always appeared to Jeff like he ought to be deep underground forging magical rings out of Rhinegold. Despite the added years, he seemed if anything younger: healthier, less pale, not so wizened.

"Let me introduce you," Mark said, gesturing to the man and woman seated at a patio table. "This is my wife Eleanor, and this is Will Stone. This is Tango — my old partner Jeff."

Jeff blinked as he and Stone eyed one another. The man was ringing some kind of bell… then he had it: Pierce's estate executor, who'd come in with a polygraph machine. Stone was giving him the same suspicious side-eye that he'd been giving Stone, too.

"Jeff, welcome. I've heard so much about you," Eleanor said. Jeff shifted his attention from Stone, and sized her up quickly. Small, white, mid-thirties, conservative clothes coded as upper-class or at least well-educated, slight nervousness behind her smile as though she were worried about making a bad impression. "Lemonade? You must be exhausted after your trip."

"Absolutely," Jeff said, sliding into the empty seat further from Eleanor and closer to Stone. "Thank you so much."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Winger," Stone said, extending a hand. His expression was flinty and intent.

 _Okay, there's a story here_ , Jeff thought. No reason not to play along for the moment at least. "And you," he said, shaking Stone's hand.

"Our daughter is with my mother this weekend," Eleanor said as she poured Jeff a lemonade. "Julie's eighteen months. Inside it's a mess," she added, gesturing towards the house, "but we moved some of the junk out of the guest room for you."

"Speaking of, let me get your bags." Mark hadn't sat back down. "Sit, sit, you just drove all this way — enjoy the lemonade. I'll be two seconds. You leave it locked?"

"You don't need to…" Jeff remembered how Mark could be, when he'd decided to do something nice for you. Easiest just to let him do it. "Thanks." He tossed Mark his keys.

Jeff, Eleanor, and Stone watched Mark go.

"He's so excited you're here." Eleanor smiled. "You know how he gets, I suppose. He had a big breakfast planned, _saltenas_. He's been on a Bolivian cuisine kick. I knew how long the drive was, so I talked him into dinner instead — I hope you like _modongo_?"

"Absolutely," Jeff said, though he had no idea what _modongo_ was. It could have been anything from pancakes to old car engine parts. "Mark still does the gourmet cooking, I take it?"

"It's how we met!" Eleanor beamed.

She looked ready to jump into a delightful meet-cute story right out of a rom-com (boy meets wok?), but Stone cleared his throat. "What brings you so far east, Mr. Winger?"

"I needed a change of scenery," Jeff said cautiously. It wasn't at all clear to him why Stone was pretending they hadn't met once before, back at Greendale. "Mark was kind enough to take me in."

"I see." Stone's expression could best be read as a glower. He'd been warm enough at the bar after Pierce's bequest, Jeff recalled.

"Will is a partner at Biddle Heath, too," Eleanor offered.

Jeff nodded. "So hopefully you'll be my boss," he said. _See how I'm going along with you, asshole? See how obliging I am?_

"Hopefully," Stone agreed. "I've heard a lot of good things."

* * *

Annie's flight was delayed, she missed her connection, she had to stay overnight at a hotel connected to the airport in Chicago, the next flight was delayed too, it was a whole big thing and she might have gotten there sooner if she'd just rented a car and driven. Then she discovered just how long it took to ride the subway. The blue line from the airport to the green line to the red line and she had to haul her suitcases the whole way and yes it was less than two dollars and would have been thirty with a taxi but… Nevertheless, eventually she reached her new home.

She didn't know a soul in the city, of course, but Frankie had helped her out via the Greendale Alumni Housing Connection web site — Tory Jenkins was the only name on the list for the entire region. So it was with a sense of mounting excitement that she walked up the steps to the second-floor apartment on a side street a quarter-mile from the nearest train station, and knocked on the door.

"Hello, Tory? I'm —" Annie froze, mid-sentence, when she saw who had answered the door. Vicki, formerly of Greendale, who had once forced a pencil through Pierce's cheek.

"Crap," said Vicki. "You're Annie Edison? I thought you were Annie Kim! I thought I was getting the other one… damn it."

"Vicki?" Annie gasped.

Vicki sighed. "I should have known. It's always about you people. I go two thousand miles to get away from you, and yet you keep coming. God. Are all the rest of you here, too?"

"Vicki…"

"Because if you think you and what's-his-name, your boyfriend with the muscles and the drinking problem, if you think I'm going to let you shove me out of my own apartment so you can screw —"

"Vicki!"

"Oh, can it, princess."

Confused, Annie held up a folded printout. "The website said Tory Jenkins…"

Vicki shrugged. "I was tired of Vicki, so I tried Tory, and no, it didn't take, so don't call me Tory." She looked Annie up and down. "Well, you may as well come in."

Annie hefted her suitcases and followed Vicki into the apartment. Two bedrooms, the slightly smaller one empty but for a futon. Surprisingly clean bathroom and kitchen. Sparsely furnished living room dominated by a television with three different gaming consoles connected. "This is a nice place," she offered.

"Don't mess it up," Vicki warned her. "I have it all just how I want it. Is your boyfriend lugging the rest of your stuff?"

Annie delicately set her luggage down in the empty bedroom. "Actually, just to clarify, Jeff and I were never dating and we're definitely not together now. He was engaged to someone else, and… that doesn't matter. I don't know where he is, but probably he's still in Colorado. Or maybe he went out to Cali."

"He can't live here unless you guys are willing to pay two-thirds… no, three-quarters of the rent."

"Vicki, he's not even in this time zone!"

Vicki's eyes narrowed. "I've known you people for what, six years? Seven? He's practically always followed you around like a puppy. Probably he's stalking you from one of the houses across the street…"

"But… He… I…" Annie struggled to provide a response.

Something in her expression must have startled Vicki, whose face softened as she looked at her. "It's okay," she said, only a little sullenly. "You guys had a fight and now you're apart, for however long that lasts…"

"I'm not going to see him again any time soon. You definitely aren't," Annie assured her.

"I'll believe that when I see it. Or don't see it. Him. Whatever." Vicki gestured dismissively. "Anyway, welcome to Somerville. It's like Cambridge but with less cultural cachet. Instead of Harvard we have Tufts and the bus service isn't as good."

"Thanks," Annie said weakly.

"I've been here for five months, so I basically know my way around. You can ask me anything."

"Great. Where's the nearest grocery store? Do I need to take the bus to get to it, or…?"

"No idea. So is that all your stuff?" Vicki gave Annie's luggage a critical eye. "That's not much. What are you doing out here? Don't say you're taking over my great-aunt's bakery," Vicki warned her, "because I'm doing that and I already have all the help I need, thanks much."

"Oh!" Annie bounced on the balls of her feet, pleased with the chance to tell someone. "I'm working for the FBI!"

Vicki snorted. "For serious?"

"It's just an office job. I'm at the very bottom of the totem pole. I think. GS-5. Mostly I'll be… making photocopies? Answering the phone? I'm not a hundred percent sure." Annie shook her head. "In three years I can apply to the Academy, which…"

"Oh," Vicki said, sounding equal parts bemused and disgusted. "Your face just lit up. I didn't think real people's faces ever did that." She looked thoughtful a moment. "Isn't the FBI in, like, Washington?"

"That's where the headquarters is, yes." Annie nodded quickly. "But the FBI has fifty-six regional offices, including one in downtown Boston."

* * *

The day he moved out of Mark and Eleanor's guest bedroom Jeff finally gave in and called Britta.

"Hello mysterious unknown number," was Britta's suspicious greeting. "I agree to nothing and grant you no permission for anything, I decline any and all end-user license agreements, I won't participate in your poll, I don't give you permission to record this call, and you can't claim otherwise without…"

"Britta."

"Jeff! Where are you? You deleted your email and your Twitter and your Facebook and your Instagram –"

"I did, yeah."

"You big drama queen! It's been weeks! I figured you would be gone the weekend Annie was here, but…"

"I told you, I'm not coming back. I'm sitting in my office staring at the city skyline and admiring the fact that Greendale is two thousand miles away." Actually he was in his apartment, staring at the framed clipping of him and Annie at the debate, which he'd hung a few minutes earlier. "I'm working with Mark again… we used to be lawyers together, back in the day…"

Britta chuckled.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing, nothing," Britta said. _Mark that he used to work with_ had been literally the first name on Annie's list of leads. Then she did a double take. "Wait, you're two thousand miles away?"

"I know, it's going to be hard for you to live your life without being able to bask in my majestic presence. But like a fledgling eagle leaving the nest, so too must I spread my wings and fly. I'll text you my address. This is my new cell number, by the way."

"Wow, so you really aren't coming back?"

"I'm really not. Did you guys have a pool going?"

"You wish," scoffed Britta. "I mean, Craig and Ian and Frankie and me, we'll all miss you, but I think we'll get by."

"Speaking of getting by," Jeff said seriously, "I assume you'd have mentioned it by now if Annie was anything but spectacular."

"Why are you asking me? Haven't you been stalking her online? That's what social media is for: stalking your exes."

"She's not my ex!" Jeff snapped. "And no, I've been abstaining from… everything up to and including LinkedIn."

Britta snorted. "Like you could resist."

"I manage to avoid carbs —" He cleared his throat. "So she's all right? Being amazing? Probably not real happy with me…"

"Uh, yeah. She was pretty upset, dumbass. I'm kind of still mad at you on her behalf, actually. If you'd called me last week I might have hung up on you. Made you suffer a little."

"It's better this way. And trust me, I've suffered enough."

Britta shook her head, though she knew he couldn't see it. "It was a dumb move."

"Well, it's done, so, here we are," Jeff snapped.

They were silent for a couple of seconds.

"You should come visit sometime," he offered. "I'm sure you'd find all the Revolutionary War stuff inspiring. Tax protestors and rebels against a tyrannical empire and tea in the harbor."

Britta harrumphed. "Bunch of white male slave owners who appropriated native culture and probably did massive environmental damage littering… wait." She blinked. "Where are you?"

"Boston," said Jeff. "Didn't I say?"

"You definitely did not." Britta wondered if he could hear her grin over the phone.

"Anyway. Annie's back in DC by now, right? I was thinking I should fly back out in the near future. I kind of left without talking to my mother…"

Britta was bent over double, trying to hold in peals of laughter. "Uh huh," she gasped.

"…Okay, you're laughing." Jeff sounded cross. "Why are you laughing?"

"I know something you don't know!" she gasped with delight, and hung up quickly.


	4. Is That What He Said?

Chapter Text

Annie had worried a little, when she moved in, that she needed to start looking for another place to live immediately. But in the weeks since she'd come to Boston (well, not Boston, Cambridge) (well, not Cambridge, Somerville) Vicki had warmed to her considerably, a result Annie attributed to several factors working in concert.

Factor one: Cleanliness. Vicki was a stickler for cleanliness whose enthusiasm for disinfectant and lack of grime approached Annie's own. Annie had gotten used to being the de facto cleaning lady at her old apartment; living with Vicki made for a refreshing change. Yes, Abed and Troy and later Britta would all tidy up, with varying degrees of foot-dragging and passive-aggression, when she'd pressed them, but Vicki actually cleaned up after herself without being asked and seemed just as pleased that Annie did the same. Vicki's standard for what constituted 'clean' was a little lower than Annie's, but not so much so as to lead to problems.

Factor two: Friendliness. Annie Edison was a bright ray of sunshine, dammit, and she wasn't going to let a bad first impression get the better of her, even if it was a first impression that Vicki had gotten of her gradually over a six-year period. It's not like Vicki had ever actively hated Annie; she'd only ever hated the study group in general and Pierce in particular. Annie had been splash-damage; she hadn't even remembered Annie's name. So Annie was bound and determined to laugh at Vicki's jokes, cluck her tongue sympathetically at Vicki's complaints, marvel at Vicki's triumphs, and pretend to enjoy whatever Vicki's favorite television was. That last strategy had been especially key with Abed, and she was confident she could adapt it here. Also, most television was pretty okay if you gave it a chance; it had taken the better part of a year but eventually she'd enjoyed _Inspector Spacetime_.

Factor three: Gossip. For someone who claimed to have only a distant disdain for the Greendale Seven (aka the the Spanish study group, aka the Anthropology study group, aka the Biology study group, aka the History study group, aka the Save Greendale Committee, aka the Activities Committee, aka the Nipple-Dippers), Vicki never tired of hearing stories about what idiots they'd been. Annie couched her badmouthing of her friends in only the most affectionate of terms, but Vicki was insatiable. She especially enjoyed any story that featured Pierce suffering, which to be fair was a decent number of them. She also staunchly agreed with Annie that Jeff Winger was a real piece of work — she'd always thought so, she'd said, but especially now that she had the inside scoop.

Factor four: Patience.

* * *

"Settle an argument," Vicki demanded as soon as Annie came home one day. "Which of these is better?" She pointed to two pound cakes on the kitchen counter.

"Uh, okay," Annie said cautiously as she approached the cakes. "Am I judging based on appearance, smell, taste, nutritional content, or… do you have nutritional information?"

Vicki shook her head. "One of them is the way we make pound cake now. The other is the way my idiot cousin wants to start making it."

Annie tried to deflect. "I'm really not a pound cake person…"

"Ugh! Of course you're a tiny little princess who doesn't eat cake, we all get it!" snapped Vicki. "One bite of each won't kill you. Come on."

"You know, speaking of baking, I wanted to ask you about the stuff in the fridge." Annie glanced at Vicki, then back at the cakes, trying to guess which was the one Vicki wanted her to endorse. "You know the six boxes of muffins in there?"

"They're not muffins, they're chuffins. What about them?" Vicki stood, arms folded, ready to judge Annie's complaints as meaningless.

"Well, they take up a lot of space."

"It's not like there's anything else in there."

"That's true," Annie said, "but only because I haven't bought any groceries because there isn't any space. Maybe the chuffins could be in a refrigerator at the bakery, or…?"

Vicki scoffed. "Yeah, no. There's no room over there — have you even been? It's like the size of a closet… c'mon. Try the cake." She thrust a fork in Annie's direction, then stared at Annie as she reluctantly ate one bite of each pound cake. "Well?"

Annie shrugged helplessly. "Well, um. One is kind of lemony and one isn't."

Vicki waited for her to provide more of an opinion. "And?"

Just then the toilet flushed. Annie turned, confused. "Who's in the bathroom?"

"My stupid cousin," said Vicki. "You remember, from Greendale?"

"You had a cousin?"

"Uh, yeah," Vicki said in a duh sort of way. "You must have seen us together."

"Okay."

"Plus we look a lot alike."

"I don't…" Annie trailed off as the woman in the bathroom came into the kitchen. "Quendra?"

The blonde smiled, as though it brought her pleasure to hear her own name. "Hi? You must be Vicki's new roommate?"

"Annie's from Greendale, too," Vicki announced.

"Do you not remember me?" Annie asked, surprised. "We…" She tried to remember an appropriate occasion. "My friend Jeff tried to get you into our Anthropology study group sophomore year?"

"Um…" Quendra wrinkled her nose, concentrating. "Oh!" she cried, her face lighting up. "You're his girlfriend he wanted to make jealous!"

Annie let out a nervous laugh. "What? No! I'm not — wasn't… did he say that? Is that what he said? Did he say that? Did he say he wanted to make me jealous?" She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the matter at hand. _It was years ago and he was sleeping with Britta at the time and he wouldn't give you a straight answer then either so what do you care?_ "Did he?"

"I dunno, it was years ago… wow!" Quendra's response to Annie was one of dull surprise. "So how have you been? Are you and Jeb still together?"

"Jeff," Vicki said. "And she's weird about it. Says they weren't together."

Quendra tried to make a _wow, that's so interesting noise_ but it came out as a _wow, I'm pretending that I care_ noise.

"Okay, well, first of all, Jeff and I…" Annie screwed her eyes shut and shook her head. "Wait. Back it up. You're cousins?"

"Uh, yeah," Vicki said as if it were obvious. "We look basically identical."

Annie looked at Vicki, then at Quendra, and then back to Vicki. "Absolutely."

"Our great-aunt Myrtle died and left us each half of her business," Quendra said. "So we moved out here from Greendale. I lived here for the first few months." She gestured vaguely around the apartment. "But Vicki's terrible and I couldn't stand living with her for one single second longer, I mean she is awful and I can barely handle working with her also we're kind of running the bakery into the ground."

"Shut up, Quendra," muttered Vicki.

"Oh, come on, it's Annie!" cried Quendra. "I remember you now!" she told Annie. "You were always playing crazy games with your hot boyfriend and your weird roommates —"

"He wasn't my boyfriend," Annie protested weakly. "Is that really how people outside the study group saw us?" _No wonder I went on four dates in six years._

"Let's get the subject shifted off of your problems and back onto our much more interesting problems," suggested Vicki. "Pick a pound cake."

"Ooh, yeah," said Quendra.

"I don't… this one is lemony, and this one isn't." Annie pointed at each cake in turn. "Which one is better depends on what you're feeling up for, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah," grumbled Vicki. "But which one are you feeling up for, right now? And don't say neither because you don't like cake. Everybody likes cake, you're lying if you say you don't like cake."

"She could have an allergy," pointed out Quendra.

"She doesn't, though," Vicki said confidently. "You don't, do you? Lactose and gluten and stuff, those are all cool, right?"

"Yes! No! I mean…" Annie flailed about for an escape. "Did I ever tell you about the time Pierce probably broke a frozen yogurt machine at the mall?"

"Yeah, it wasn't actually much of a story."

Annie gave up. "If I had to pick one I'd pick the not-lemony one. Which is not to say the lemon-flavored cake isn't good. It's just as good! Better, maybe! Or not! It's really close. I just don't care for the lemon as much…"

"Hah!" Vicki waved her finger in Quendra's face. "I told you! Lemon is for losers!"

"Aw, man," mumbled Quendra.

* * *

"I'm just going to come right out and ask," Jeff said. "Does the name Pierce Hawthorne mean anything to you?" He sat in Mark's office, leaning back and sipping coffee.

Mark had his feet up on his own desk, which was a little precarious, but he liked the way it made him feel cool, he said. "Pierce Hawthorne? Hawthorne Wipes, Hawthorne Napkins, Hawthorne Paper Products?"

Jeff nodded. "That's him."

"Why do you ask?"

"I used to take classes at the community college with him."

"Not an answer to my question, Tango. Why are you suddenly all up on school chums?"

Jeff considered several possible answers before replying. "I really need something to distract me from my own head right now, and the Schmidt case isn't cutting it."

"Because of Annie?" Mark asked sympathetically. In a moment of weakness — or rather, several moments of alcohol-lubricated weakness over the course of weeks — Jeff had confided in Mark about his ultimate reason for leaving Greendale.

"No, I just…" Jeff sighed. Mark was a lot of things but 'willing to let a subject drop' wasn't one of them. "Work with me."

"All right, all right… you know my view on it."

"Pierce Hawthorne," Jeff said firmly. "Did he ever hire you, or anyone at the firm, or…?"

"I don't think so, chief," Mark said. "For one thing, he's dead. I remember Will flew to Denver to handle his bequest."

"Right, so, William Stone worked for him, then."

Mark shook his head. "Will used to do trusts and estates at Marlon Finch. As I recall — you'd have to ask him to be sure — he assisted on the Hawthorne will seven, eight years back, when you and I were still associates. There was some kind of snafu at Marlon Finch and even though he didn't work there any more, he ended up executing the estate."

"Some kind of snafu? What kind of snafu would require him to go back to it like that?"

"I dunno, boss, I'm not an estate lawyer." Mark shrugged. "Again, what's this all about?"

"I met Stone at Pierce's bequest," Jeff explained. He figured if he could trust anyone, it was Mark. "We were… kind of friends. Pierce and me, I mean. Then in his will he called me gay and left me a bottle of single-malt." Jeff made a sour face. "He had messages for everybody in our old study group, because Pierce always had to get in the last word. Then afterwards we went out for drinks and Stone got falling-down drunk and claimed Pierce had died masturbating to death."

"Masturbating to death?" Mark repeated.

"There was also this whole thing with frozen sperm, it's not important." Jeff waved it off. "But now I find out that he recruited you to come out here, and now I'm out here, and the story of how Pierce died sounds kind of absurd…"

"I'm sorry, what are you suggesting?" Mark asked. "Because it sounds like you're suggesting something illegal."

"What if… I'm just laying this out there… what if Pierce faked his death?"

"If he faked his death would he pick such a ridiculous cause of death?" Mark mulled it over. "If I faked my death and I could pick any cause, if it didn't have to be an accident at sea where my body wasn't recovered… I'd go with rescuing orphans from a burning parochial school, or stepping in front of a bullet meant for Judi Dench, or… anything more heroic than masturbating to death."

"Ah-ah-ah!" Jeff raised a finger and grinned. "But isn't that what makes it the perfect cover story?"

"Well…" Mark had an expression his face Jeff recognized as _I'm way too nice to tell you I think you're being crazy_. "I guess you knew Hawthorne better than I did," he allowed, "but it sounds a little far-fetched."

"Hmmph."

"Of course, any story that involves someone faking their death is going to sound far-fetched," Mark said thoughtfully. "That's something that just doesn't happen outside bad crime dramas… well, Ken Kesey tried to fake his death. Didn't work out for him. Is your friend smarter than Ken Kesey?"

"I think Pierce claimed to have beaten Ken Kesey in a drinking contest once…" Jeff sighed. "I know, I know it sounds crazy. Stone's hiding something from me, though, I'm sure of it."

"Well, talk to him about it," Mark suggested. "I mean, you don't need me to. Do you?" His face lit up suddenly. "I could, if you want. We could arrange a dinner party with a surprise ambush interview —"

"That's all right," Jeff assured him. "I'll talk to him. You're right; I can just ask him. He probably thinks it's weird that I haven't."

"On another subject," Mark said, "have you given any more consideration to Eleanor's offer?"

"I really don't need to be set up with anyone," Jeff said with a scowl. "Annie — I mean, it's not a priority right now, and if it was, I wouldn't need to be set up."

"You can't keep mooning over Annie Edison forever," Mark chided him. "At least, not if you aren't going to head down to DC and visit her."

Jeff scoffed. "I can't —"

"Amtrak runs a train from Boston to DC close to twenty times a day," Mark declared. "You leave South Station at 9:30 on Friday night, you're in DC before seven o'clock Saturday morning. Coming back you could take the Acela up Sunday afternoon, leave at four and get in before midnight."

Jeff stared at him for a moment.

"Just looking out for you, buddy," Mark said. "Also I found her on Facebook but everything's locked down." He pointed to his computer screen, but Jeff refused to turn his head. "Annie Edison, 24/F. Riverside High School class of 2009. Greendale Community College, blah blah blah. FBI. Location not given but it's definitely her. I could maybe get in if we had a friend in common — which of your friends is most likely to accept a random stranger's friend request?"

"I'm not too nice to tell you I think you're being crazy," Jeff said slowly.

"This wouldn't be necessary if you hadn't burned your social media presence to the ground in what someone who didn't care as much about your feelings as me might call a tantrum." Mark smiled. "Tango, I've known you for many years. There was an interruption, yes, but I'm impressed with the personal growth you've exhibited since then. And you have been off your feed about this girl for a long, long time."

"I haven't…" Jeff stopped, because he knew it was pointless. "Fine. I know."

"You've got to either call up this woman or else move on and let Eleanor introduce you to her spin class instructor." Mark tented his fingers. "She's probably moving on. Annie, not the spin instructor. Although, her too, eventually."

"Cash, I want her to move on. I hope she is." _You don't mean that_ , part of Jeff insisted. _You want her to pine for you the way you're pining for her._ "I just want her to be happy."

* * *

"Good morning, Annie!" said the guy whose name Annie didn't know. He greeted her almost every morning on the way to work, when she came into Beans 'n Things, the coffee shop by her apartment. This was less creepy than it might have been: she and the guy had gotten into an involved conversation about the best sitcoms on Netflix, on one of her first days in Somerville. She'd mentioned her name at some point during that discussion and she was absolutely one hundred percent certain he'd given his, but she couldn't for the life of her remember it. He was sitting in the front window of the coffee shop with a laptop, nearly every morning. He was definitely working, there were spreadsheets on the screen of the laptop whenever she peeked — but he worked from home, apparently. Home meaning the coffee shop. It was possible he lived at the coffee shop.

"Good morning… buckaroo," Annie responded. Every morning she hoped she'd remember his name, or else that someone else would ask his name, or that he'd order something and give his name to the barista, or _something_ so that she didn't have to ask his name. She'd taken to addressing him with a different vaguely uncool nickname each time, which hopefully made her seem like a moderately pathetically uncool girl instead of a really rude girl. It was way too late to ask him.

"Small americano, extra shot?" the barista — whose name was Jeanne, Annie knew that one — asked her.

She nodded absently, and paid. The pittance she was paid meant that a nice cup of coffee in the morning was basically the only luxury she could afford. "So, what's the good word?" she asked the guy whose name she didn't know.

The guy whose name she didn't know shrugged. "Unrest in the middle east, concern over climate change, the current crop of fall comedies are universally terrible. The usual. You?"

"My roommate has filled our fridge with chuffins," Annie confided.

"What's a chuffin?" the guy whose name Annie didn't know asked.

"I don't know. It looks like a muffin. There's six dozen of them in the fridge for some reason."

The guy whose name Annie didn't know frowned. "That's a lot… are they on an all-chuffin diet?"

"No." Annie frowned. "At least I don't think so."

"Are they any good? Did you try one?"

Annie shook her head no. "I'm on real thin ice with my roommate; she used to really hate this group that I was part of…"

"Let me guess: some kind of right-wing activist group," the guy whose name Annie didn't know said. "Probably anti-birth-control, because anti-abortion is too moderate for you."

Annie chuckled. "Yes, exactly."

"I was trying to be funny," the guy whose name Annie didn't know said, his tone suddenly turned serious.

"I got that."

"You're a woman in your twenties, you're in Somerville — it's a safe bet you fall on the left side of the spectrum."

"Uh huh."

"Hence the irony."

"You know, you explaining the joke makes it so much funnier…"

"Really?" the guy whose name Annie didn't know sounded skeptical. "I've been told the opposite."

"Those people are fools," Annie assured him.

"Small americano, extra shot," Jeanne the barista announced.

"See you, Annie," the cute guy whose name Annie didn't know who flirted with her every morning said, as she left the coffee shop.

"See you!" _You see that?_ Annie told herself. _A cute guy — a different cute guy — a cute guy who isn't Jeff Winger — being cute at you. That's good. That's a thing you should like._

 _It's like_ Inspector Spacetime _. Act like you like it until you like it. This is moving on._


	5. Like Nibbling On Your Earlobe

Jeff stood in Stone's office doorway, knocking on the doorframe. "Excuse me, Will? You have a minute?"

Stone was at his standing desk, with one document open on one screen of his computer and another on the other. He glanced Jeff's way. "Of course. Do you have the interrogatories for Schmidt?"

Jeff nodded. "Yeah, I can email them to you. But it's not about the Schmidt case, it's about Pierce Hawthorne." He eyed the other man, but Stone betrayed nothing.

"What about him?"

"You were the executor of his estate," Jeff said. When Stone failed to respond, he pressed on. "At Mark's, a couple of weeks ago, you acted like you didn't know me, and I played along. Which, hey, I'll play along. I just don't understand why."

"Could you email me the interrogatories?" Stone asked him.

"See, this right here is what I don't understand." Jeff gestured to the space between them. "Again, I'm willing to play along in whatever way you need me to. I'd just like to understand why, or at least I'd appreciate you telling me you aren't going to tell me. You're being weird, Will."

Stone's mouth tightened slightly. "Come in and close the door, Jeff," he said.

Jeff almost made a face at the theatrics, but did as he was told.

"Have a seat." Stone took a few steps over to his windowsill, and leaned against it. Then his whole body sagged and he slid into a chair in the corner of his office. "Bleah," he sighed, blowing a lungful of air out. He rested an elbow on the table next to him and set his chin upon it. "So the thing about Pierce Hawthorne," he said breezily, "is that he had a complicated will. I mean, stupid complicated. Clauses and clauses and clauses. I helped write part of it, back when I was at Marlon Finch in Denver. The damn thing runs three volumes."

"I never actually saw the will," Jeff mused.

"Trust me, you don't want to. Also big parts of it are confidential." Stone made a sour face. "You know he was worth over seventy million dollars?"

Jeff raised his eyebrows. "That sounds high…"

"Getting a reasonable valuation on everything isn't trivial — how much do you think monopoly control over six megaHertz of wireless spectrum is worth? Nobody's using it for anything, does that make it worthless? How about a machine that detects love?"

Jeff stirred in his seat — _a machine that detects love?_ It made him think of Borchert's lab, over a year ago, and that made him think of Annie, and that…

Stone, meanwhile, was shaking his head. "Almost everything he had was layered in shell corporations and offshore accounts. He was his half-brother's sole heir…"

"Gilbert is dead?" Jeff sat up in his seat. "I didn't know."

Stone nodded dismissively. "Gilbert Lawson was in a car crash about six months before Hawthorne's death. Very sad, don't get me wrong. I never met the man."

"He was, uh, a decent guy. Nicer than Pierce, most of the time…"

"Lawson's death hit Hawthorne hard," Stone explained. "He spent the last months of his life revising and expanding his will. Making arrangement after arrangement, trust after trust, for the event of his death. I'd left Marlon Finch by then and moved out here, so this part is secondhand. I'm told he barely managed to get it done before his own untimely passing."

"Troy inherited the fortune, didn't he? Troy Barnes?"

Stone made a so-so gesture. "Hawthorne left your friend Troy just over fourteen million. With a pile of riders and restrictions, as you probably remember. I said at the time it was the bulk of the Hawthorne fortune, which it wasn't and isn't, but I was just carrying out instructions. In fact it's about twenty percent of the total fortune, still enough to ruin a guy's life if he can't handle it. Though as far as I know he's doing fine. There was a run-in with pirates during his trip, but that was all taken care of. He's in LA now, if you were wondering."

"So…" Jeff tried to figure out where Stone was going with this. "The bulk of the Hawthorne fortune is intact? Who controls it?"

"Hawthorne controls it," Stone said simply. "Despite being dead." He rolled his eyes.

"What?"

"It's all tied up in trusts and limited-use accounts and nonprofit foundations with very specific operating instructions… I told you, when we had the will printed it ran to three volumes."

Jeff leaned back in his seat. "This is an incredible series of revelations and all, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't address the question of why you pretended not to know me, when we met again at Mark's house."

"Your friend Mark was on a list of lawyers that the Pierce Hawthorne Thunder & Lasers Secret Foundation has promised my firm a small cash prize for convincing to relocate."

"The 'Pierce Hawthorne Thunder & Lasers Secret Foundation?' " Jeff repeated.

"Hawthorne named it."

"Clearly."

"But one of the conditions of the Thunder & Lasers Secret Foundation award is that the subjects not be aware of the Hawthorne web of foundations' interest in them." Stone cleared his throat. "I wasn't sure I could tell you any of this, so I played it close to my chest when we met. But, uh, apparently it's fine."

"I'm not on the list?"

"You're on a different list, different rules, I can't go into detail obviously." Stone shrugged. "I mean, you remember the whole stupid thing with the polygraph machine, you and Annie Edison —"

"What do you mean," Jeff interrupted, "me and Annie Edison?"

Stone gave him a blank look. "I just said I can't go into detail."

"So Pierce is being weird and controlling at me… from beyond the grave?" Jeff scratched his chin. "I wish I could say I was surprised."

"I'm not saying that the Thunder & Lasers Secret Foundation's ultimate purpose was drawing you, personally yet indirectly, away from Colorado," Stone added. "That would not be an appropriate thing for me to say."

"Huh." Jeff and Stone looked at one another for a moment. "Is there anything it would be appropriate for you to tell me, or…?"

Stone cleared his throat. "I really do need the Schmidt interrogatories ASAP. It's not related to Hawthorne, but… you know."

"Yeah."

"You work for me."

"Yes."

"Well, we both work for clients."

"Yes."

"But I'm your boss."

"Yeah."

"One of them. For now."

"Uh, yeah?"

"Oh, that wasn't a threat," Stone assured him. "Next year, year after, you'll be an equity partner, too, I'm sure."

"Ah."

"But for now: the interrogatories."

Jeff sensed the portion of the conversation where Stone dropped nuggets of secret lore had ended. "Right, right. I'll email them to you as soon as I'm back in my office." He rose, his mind awash.

 _A machine that detects love._

* * *

"Morning, Annie," the guy whose name she didn't know said as she came into Beans 'n Things.

"Yo, el Capitan!" Annie made finger guns at the guy, and immediately regretted it. He didn't seem to have noticed. _That's okay,_ she told herself, _we can come back from that. Think how embarrassing you were with Jeff freshman year. No, don't think that. Don't think about Jeff._

"I wanted to ask you…" The guy trailed off, hesitating, maybe because he'd processed the finger guns thing and changed his mind about wanting to converse with her.

"Small americano, extra shot?" Jeanne the barista asked her, in the ensuing pause. Annie nodded.

The guy hadn't finished announcing whatever it was he'd wanted to ask her about, so after she paid for the drink she jumped in to fill the silence. "This is kind of a random question," she said, "but every day I see you in here and you're clearly doing something, so, what are you doing?"

"Huh, wow." The guy blinked as though she'd disrupted his whole train of thought. "That's kind of a complicated question…"

"I'm sorry?"

"No, no, it's fine." The guy winced. "I'm a biostatistician; I run meta-analyses of drug studies for pharmaceutical companies. Well, for the company that I work for, that the pharmaceutical companies contract with. I really hate the people I work with, so I work from home as much as I can. I only go in in the afternoons, three days a week."

"Oh." Annie raised her eyebrows. "That sounds very… specific."

"Uh, yeah. It's super boring, I know."

"I was going to say that it sounded interesting," she explained, "but then I was like, do I really want to tell a lie this early in the morning?"

He laughed. "Right. You only get so many lies per day, you've got to husband them closely. I totally understand. I always tell the truth, one hundred percent of the time, before I've had my morning coffee. You look great today, by the way. Although, fair warning…" He took a sip of his coffee. "This is my second cup."

Reflexively, Annie glanced at the floor and bobbed her head, the way she'd used to do sometimes when talking to Jeff, the way she hadn't done in a long time. "Well, thank you." She felt obliged to say something more. "I used to be a pharmaceutical rep," she volunteered.

The guy nodded absently.

"But now I work at the FBI," she continued. "No, really," she added, seeing his skeptical expression.

"Sure you do. Agent Annie."

"I do! I'm the very lowest-level employee at the Boston field office downtown. I know I'm the lowest level because it's a federal job and the payscales are all posted online."

"So you make less than the janitors?"

"I don't know about that. The cleaners are outside contractors," Annie said. Sensing she was losing whatever cachet her FBI affiliation might have granted her, she added, "I mostly do stupid paperwork stuff, but one time I handled a piece of evidence."

"Really?"

"Well, a photocopy of a piece of evidence. A receipt."

"Still!" The guy seemed impressed.

"I know, right?" Annie beamed. _See, you can talk to a cute guy who isn't Jeff Winger just as well as anybody._

"Uh, well… excuse me," the guy said suddenly, and rose and dashed into the restroom.

Annie stood there a moment, musing on the interaction.

"Annie," said Jeanne the barista, sliding her coffee towards her.

"Thanks… Actually," she said, turning to Jeanne the barista, "I have a question for you."

The barista sighed. "Yes, it _is_ very cute the way you two flirt for a minute every morning. He didn't used to come in every single weekday, so, thanks for that." She paused. "That wasn't sarcasm; he cleans up after himself and he tips well. So the thanks were real. The part about it being cute was sarcasm."

"Oh, I wasn't…" Annie trailed off. Suddenly she really didn't want to admit to the barista that she didn't know the guy's name. She shook her head. "Never mind. Anyway, thanks."

"I didn't…" Jeanne the barista tilted her head towards the front window. "Your bus is here."

"Aw, crap," muttered Annie. Her bus was, indeed, pulling up to the stop outside the coffee shop. She hurried to catch it.

* * *

Once on the bus she texted Jeff, for the millionth time, at his old number that she knew was disconnected. She knew the messages went undelivered and unread, but still she wrote them.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **I miss you way more than you deserve**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **You kept me dangling for so long and I'm mad at you and I still think about you every day**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I meet a cute guy and he's sweet and friendly and I can't help thinking about you the whole time**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **When I am an FBI agent if you haven't shown up I am going to find you I don't care if you don't want to be found**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I will find you and chew you out about it**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **Ew no! Don't be gross Jeff**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I did not mean chewing like nibbling on your earlobe, jeez**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

"Today I am a yellow-painting dean, a yellow-painting dean, a yellow-painting dean…" Craig Pelton sat at his desk, working on the paperwork Frankie had dropped off that morning. Specifically, his watercolor for the community college's application to continue to be connected to the city of Greendale's electrical grid. Life was, all in all, strangely quiet. Usually at this time in the school year there'd already been several crises, demanding Craig and his friends leap into action to save Greendale, but for once, all was well.

Probably it was a combination of Frankie's skillful management and Craig's own skillful painting-by-numbers.

The yellow portions of the painting complete, he was about to move on to orange when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Dean, it's Jeff Winger. I need help."

"Jeffrey!" Craig rose dramatically to his feet, though there was no one there to see it. He would have sat back down, but in rising so quickly he'd knocked his chair down and away. Jeffrey was more important than sitting, anyway. "Jeffrey, where are you? I've been so worried!"

"I'm fine —"

"You just said you needed help! Did you hike the Appalachian Trail? Did you slip and fall on a remote portion of the Appalachian Trail? Are you calling me from the only doctor's office in Sugar Grove, West Virginia?"

"What? No!" Jeffrey sounded irritated. Probably he was drinking again.

Craig clucked his tongue. "Well, mister, with that attitude I'm not sure I want to help you. You left us all in the lurch, you know."

"I'm sure it took Frankie all of forty-five minutes to find someone to teach my classes…"

"Yes, but he got a better offer from the halfway house on Norfolk Street. She had to find a second person and that took the better part of two hours! Do you think Frankie's time is just worthless? What do you have against Frankie, Jeffrey?!"

"Dean. Craig." His tone was more resigned. "I'm sorry I left so abruptly and I'm sorry I haven't been in touch."

"Well." Craig tried to stay angry, but failed. "I accept your apology." He was going to change the subject to something more pleasant, but Jeffrey kept talking.

"It was for the best, though. Maybe not the best for me, or even for Greendale, but the best for…" He sighed. "I'm calling for information."

"Of course, what do you need? Should I call Frankie, or is this about a school dance, or something else in my wheelhouse? Word searches? I've been doing a lot of word searches. For the city. You have to do four word searches to get them to even look at your forms, it's ridiculous."

"It's about Russell Borchert."

"Who?"

"How's Annie doing, do you know?"

"What?"

"Answer the second question first. No, you know what, never mind —"

"She's doing well as far as I know, Jeffrey, but —"

"Forget it!" Jeff barked. "Borchert! Russell Borchert! The man who was living in the basement of the comp sci building, in the computer lab that we found the year before last."

"Oh! 'Borchert, Borchert, loved computers, more than women's butts or hooters,' that guy? Jeffrey, why on Earth do you want to know anything more about him?"

"When we found him, and brought him out of his bunker," Jeffrey said, the barely-concealed irritation back in his voice, "he was the associate dean of the school and had special administrative powers and I don't even know what else. Then I went away for a week and when I got back for the summer session he was gone. This was right before Frankie started working there, so she won't know. You were there. Where did he go? And where did his computer equipment go?"

"Oh." Craig sighed. "Is that all? He quit. Said he'd been offered a position he couldn't refuse, packed his things up, and left. I tried to get him to leave the computer stuff, but he was adamant about taking it. Said it was his personal property, not the school's. I thought, well, it's more out of date than most of the computers in the comp sci department, so small loss…"

"Craig, this is important: where did he go?"

"I don't remember!" Craig threw up his hands. "He left a forwarding address…"

"Yes?"

"But I lost it. This was before Frankie was here," he added defensively. "I was drowning in all those tiny day-to-day things she takes care of now. It doesn't matter; Borchert never got any mail here."

"Craig, do you remember anything about…"

"It was the Eastern time zone, I remember that, because I remember thinking it would be hard to coordinate anything with him on the phone because he was two hours in the future… not that that ended up being a problem."

"Could it have been Boston?"

"Boston?" Craig mouthed the word a couple of times, trying out how it felt in his mouth. "That sounds right. Could be. Why… Jeffrey? Jeffrey, have you hung up on me?" He had, but Craig didn't want to accept that. "Is this a bad connection? Can you hear me? Why are you asking about Boston? Is it because Annie's in Boston? Hello? Jeffrey?"


	6. She's Four Hundred Miles Away

"Morning," the cute guy whose name Annie didn't know who flirted with her every morning said, as she came into Beans 'n Things.

"Hey there, Smiley," Annie replied. The next time she went into Beans 'n Things and he wasn't there, she decided, she would ask the barista what his name was.

While she waited for her order the guy cleared his throat. "The other day you said you were on the outs with your roommate because of a club you used to belong to."

Annie blinked. "Did I?"

"You did. I spent all day yesterday trying to come up with a non-joke explanation, but nothing doing… satisfy my curiosity?"

"Oh. Um." Annie found herself adjusting her hair. _The reason you're nervous is because he's cute and you like him. Okay, you don't, but you_ could _like him, come on!_

The guy leaned back in his seat. "Sorry if it's a personal thing. I was mostly just making conversation."

"No, no, it's fine. It's just kind of an involved story," Annie explained. "The real short version is that we were undergraduates together and my study group, um, monopolized one of the study rooms. And she stabbed one of my friends. With a pencil…. Straight through the cheek."

The guy did a combination half-cough, half-laugh. "Now see," he said, "that just raises further questions."

"I know!" She smiled nervously. "That's why I was like, 'oh dear,' just now."

"Do you have plans for Saturday?" he asked.

Of the possible followup questions she'd been expecting, that had not been one of them. "Do what?"

"See, I got my mother tickets to see Natalie Is Freezing on Saturday night, but it turns out she has a thing planned and can't go. I was going to try to sell the tickets on Craigslist, but then I thought, maybe I could bribe Annie into answering all my further questions about pencil stabbings and study rooms. Then I asked you, and then you looked nonplussed, and then I started to explain, and that brings us up to the present where I don't know what's going to happen next but in my head I'm already working on how to minimize the social embarrassment of the next time I see you after you politely decline which I think you're going to do at the end of this sentence and so I'm stretching the sentence out as much as I can…"

He paused for breath, and Annie couldn't help rescuing him. _You can do this, you can do this_. "See, though, I'm about to say yes. So you don't need to keep that sentence going." _You can do this, you can accept a date from a guy who isn't Jeff Winger. You want to do this. Or okay, you want to believe you can want to do this._ "Yes."

"Oh, good." The guy smiled at her, and she smiled back and it was a whole smiling moment, for a moment. "Uh, can I get your number?"

"Sure," Annie said, and gave it to him.

He gave her his number, and she entered it into her phone, and then she realized that she couldn't just name him 'cute guy from coffee shop' in her phone. Well, she could, but she wouldn't. Then an idea struck her. "How do you spell your name?"

The guy looked at her quizzically. "J-O-E-B-R-O-W-N," he said after a pause. Then he grinned. "You didn't know my name!"

Annie cleared her throat. "I might not have," she admitted.

The guy — Joe — laughed. "I thought you were just weird with the nicknames! Oh, I should have known!"

"Well, you just… I couldn't say I didn't know your name! And you knew my name —"

"You told me your name! I wasn't being creepy!"

"I know!" Annie cried helplessly.

His grin widened. "I told you my name when we first met, and we were talking about Netflix…"

"I knew that you'd said it, but I couldn't remember it, and I kept waiting for it to come up so I wouldn't have to ask…"

This might have gone on forever, had Jeanne the barista not intervened. "Small americano, extra shot," she called, with the tone of someone who had been trying to get Annie's attention for a little while now, and who did not find the Annie 'n Joe Show to be terribly charming. "Also, your bus."

"I have to go or I'll be late for work," Annie said apologetically.

Joe shook his head in wonder. "Well, we can't have that," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow then, Annie… also, my name is Joe!" he called after her as she headed out the door.

* * *

Jeff burst into Stone's office.

"Morning, Jeff," Stone said mildly. He was at his standing desk, drinking coffee.

"Russell Borchert!" Jeff cried.

Stone barely reacted, but Jeff had been ready for it, and saw the merest hint of a grimace flit across his face. "Beg pardon?"

"You heard me, Will," Jeff said. He cleared his throat. "I realize now that coming in here and excitedly announcing the name wasn't the chillest way to handle this."

"You could have emailed," Stone agreed. "Come in and shut the door if we're going to talk about this."

Jeff closed the door and sat down, while Stone shifted to his chair in the corner. "I was thinking about what you said yesterday," Jeff began.

"Man, really?" Stone laughed. "I said a lot of things. I say a lot of things every day." He shrugged. "Come on, Jeff."

"You said yesterday that one of the assets in the Hawthorne estate was a machine that detects love. You could only have meant Borchert's system, because if you didn't then we live in a world where there are two different machines that detect love, and I barely accept the existence of one."

Stone nodded slightly. "Fair enough."

"So where is he?" Jeff asked. "What weird part in Pierce Hawthorne's beyond-the-grave shenanigans could he possibly play, given that when Pierce 'died' Borchert had been missing for decades?"

"Did I hear you put quotation marks around 'died' in that sentence?"

"If anyone I knew would fake his death for laughs, it'd be Pierce Hawthorne."

"We were both at his funeral," Stone pointed out. "It was open casket."

"Like Pierce couldn't afford a wax mannequin!" Jeff considered. "Or he could have hired a guy with a terminal illness to get plastic surgery to look like him, then waited for that guy to die… I'm not accusing Pierce of murder," he assured Stone. "Just a near-fatal lack of common sense."

"Okay," said Stone. "Okay. I can see this is bothering you. You don't sound like yourself."

"Who do I sound like, Jeff Goldblum?" Jeff sputtered.

"Weirdly specific, but, kind of?" Stone snorted. "I assure you everything in the will about Borchert was written long before… let me start over. Borchert's initial research was partially funded by a grant from Hawthorne Labs, their computer and electronics R&D firm…"

" _Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne,_ " Jeff muttered.

"Beg pardon?" Stone asked.

"Pierce's father's will involved a video game. I remember it had hippies attacking… people."

"Oh! _Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne_ , right." Stone chuckled. "I worked on that one, back in the day. Not the game part, the legally-binding estate agreement part… so, so racist." He shook his head. "Like father, like son, am I right?"

"I feel like Pierce would want me to punch you in the face for saying that," Jeff observed genially. "But we were talking about Borchert."

"Hmm, yes. Russell Borchert was on a list of possible candidates to put to work on Operation Infinite Pierce, which…" Stone sucked air in between his teeth. "Something something virtual-reality immortality, something something brain uploaded into a computer system. You've seen movies, right?"

Jeff nodded. "That does sound like something Pierce would go for… so where's Hawthorne Labs now? Their main facility?"

Stone scoffed. "Hawthorne Labs was shut down after completing _Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne_ in 2002. Borchert isn't there."

Jeff looked at him.

"He's at MIT," Stone said. "Someplace called the Trapezoid Building, in the electronic-molecular science department."

"You have his email?"

Stone shook his head. "He doesn't use email or phones. Does all of his meeting face-to-face. I think the years and years he spent alone in a bunker under a community college, building his love-computer? May have made him a little squirrelly."

"If I go to see him," Jeff said. "I'm going to ask him about Pierce. Is he going to say he never met the man, that Pierce was dead by the time he emerged from under Greendale?"

"I assume," Stone said. He leaned forward. "Jeff, you're chasing ghosts. Is this about Pierce Hawthorne, or is it about distracting yourself from something… or someone… else? Annie Edison?"

Jeff made a face. "You've been talking to Mark?"

"I wasn't asking him anything. He's just terrible at keeping secrets," Stone replied. "Not a great trait in a lawyer."

* * *

Jeff didn't normally go out for coffee in the afternoon — he was too health-conscious to disregard his extremely vague understanding that caffeine after lunch was bad for you. But after talking to Stone, he needed to clear his head. The sidewalks outside his office were crowded with people. He wondered, briefly, where they were all going and why — most of them weren't dressed like professionals, but like shoppers or tourists. Better shopping out from the city center, better historic landmarks, too. Maybe they were all actors, hired by Pierce, to keep tabs on him. Maybe this wasn't Boston at all, but a cunning simulacrum operated by Pierce to teach Jeff some kind of dumb-ass lesson.

No. Nonsense. _You're thinking nonsense,_ he told himself. _You're looking for a mystery where there isn't one. You just want to make a caper out of it, an excuse to run around holding hands in the dark with…_

Jeff stopped short and a pair of small Japanese women behind him almost walked into him. No, he told himself. No. He glanced around, as though thinking about her might cause her to appear somehow. _She's four hundred miles away. She's being amazing out in the world. She's happier without you,_ he reminded himself.

Better to focus on what he could get his own hands on: proving that Pierce Hawthorne had faked his death and masterminded Jeff's move to Boston out of a sense of misguided competition and a need for control. _Yes,_ he thought sarcastically, _that seems much less crazy than fixating on Annie._

Coffee. Coffee would help.

* * *

Annie was occasionally called upon to go out for coffee in the afternoon — not usually, but sometimes the vagaries of schedules and deadlines put extra pressure on the staff in her office, and her supervisor would attempt to mollify everyone by sending the gofer out for coffee. This was the fourth time it had happened. Usually Annie welcomed the excuse to walk the block and a half downtown, surrounded by people and exotic sights. Today, though, she was distracted by thoughts of the morning and the cute guy whose name she didn't — thoughts of Joe.

This was moving on. This was what moving on looked like. Yes, she did plan on applying to the FBI Academy in three years, and yes that would mean changing cities; and so, yes, maybe it wasn't worth it trying to date in that brief window of time, but… No. Dumb. She was casting around looking for reasons to bail on the whole thing.

 _Jeff made his decision (without consulting me (just like always (you'd think I would have learned before this (but I did learn and that's the important thing)))) and that's that (even if he came crawling back now I have too much self-respect to just take him back (I don't (I can pretend I do (no one needs to know))))._

Her head was spinning. Annie closed her eyes, counted to three, and opened them again. Get it together, she told herself, and stepped into the coffee shop. It's over, she thought.

Then she looked up and saw him, three places ahead of her in line, ordering a latte.


	7. I Can't Trust You to Abandon Me Properly

Annie froze, but only for a half a second. Then she ducked back out of the coffee shop. Around a corner, leaning against a red brick wall, she struggled to control her breathing. Annie felt kicked in the chest; the sight of Jeff Winger, after having resigned herself to not seeing him for months at least, had rung her like a bell. Then the initial shock wore off, and she was angry.

How dare he! Annie had gone two thousand miles, and he'd what, followed her? After she'd made an effort to talk to him like a grown-up or a moderately mature middle-school student, and he'd fled without even trying to reconcile. After a summer they'd spent in daily contact, after that good-bye kiss and look that had stirred up a nest of feelings they'd never quite managed to get around to discussing, after a year — a full year, almost to the day — since he'd announced an engagement to Britta and Annie had finally accepted that nothing between them was ever going to happen, after three years of gingerly dancing around one another, after two years of him inconsistently jerking her around…

It had been over. She had accepted that it had been over — she'd accepted it twice, in fact. It hadn't taken the first time, she'd thought it had, but… it had been over. She'd been free.

It was over. She was free.

There wasn't going to be a third time.

She whipped out her phone.

* * *

 **ANNIE to BRITTA, 1512:**

 **What the hell, Britta? [Crazy frown emoji]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to FRANKIE, 1512:**

 **Did you know about this?! [Crazy frown emoji]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 1512:**

 **Tell me you didn't tell him this was a good idea! [Crazy frown emoji]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1513:**

 **I cannot believe you**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **You say one thing and you do another**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **And you'd think I would have learned by now**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **But apparently I can't even trust you to abandon me properly**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

While she waited for someone to respond, Annie took a deep breath. She risked peeking around the corner at the coffee shop's exterior. No Jeff Winger standing on the sidewalk or advancing on her. No Jeff Winger still in the coffee shop, either, from what she could see. He'd probably gone back to his secret listening post across the street from her apartment. _Oh my God,_ she thought, _Vicki was right_.

* * *

 **FRANKIE to ANNIE, 1516:**

 **You're going to have to be more specific. In the absence of detail, I cannot tell you whether 'this' is something I knew about. However I suspect the answer is no, because whatever 'this' is, it's something that upsets you, and which you would have preferred I tell you about, if I knew about it. I can't immediately think of anything that I know, that fits those criteria. I hope this helps.**

* * *

 **ANNIE to FRANKIE, 1517:**

 **Jeff is in Boston [head exploding emoji]**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1518:**

 **He didn't now**

* * *

 **FRANKIE to ANNIE, 1519:**

 **That is an excellent example of something that, if I had been aware of it, I would have told you. I have been apprised through secondary sources about Jeff's panicked flight from Greendale; he declined to bid me farewell in person. Though I was disappointed by him in that respect, I can understand the decision. At least to an extent: if I were to take it upon me to flee abruptly from this town, I would prefer to tell Jeff farewell in person but I wouldn't make it a priority, compared to saying good-bye to closer friends. Although, now that I think about it, Jeff actually was one of the closest friends I had at Greendale, as of his disappearance. I would consider you and Abed both to be closer friends, but neither of you are actually here any longer, and were already gone by the point at which Jeff left. Have you consulted Abed? He (or Britta) would probably be the most likely person to know Jeff's current whereabouts.**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1520:**

 **He doesn't no**

 **He doesn't know**

 **Dammit**

* * *

 **FRANKIE to ANNIE, 1520:**

 **Though it occurs to me that, as you're already learned of Jeff's current location, consulting Abed (or Britta) is probably unnecessary. Let me know if there's anything specific I can do for you; your choice of emoticons strongly implies you're upset. It may be presumptuous of me to suggest a cup of chamomile tea.**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1521:**

 **He thinks ur in DC**

* * *

 **FRANKIE to ANNIE, 1522:**

 **Rest assured I am entirely at your disposal, in whatever capacity I can help you. Let me know.**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 1523:**

 **Is this about Troy's new haircut?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to BRITTA, 1525:**

 **Then what's he doing here?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to FRANKIE, 1525:**

 **Thank you, Frankie.**

 **I might need you to murder Britta for me. I'm not sure yet.**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 1525:**

 **Troy has a new haircut?**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 1526:**

 **[IMAGE ATTACHED CLICK TO OPEN]**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1526:**

 **He has a lawyer job there**

 **He hasn't piqued at social media**

 **Peaked**

 **Peeked**

 **He thinks your job is in DC**

* * *

 **ANNIE to BRITTA, 1527:**

 **So you're talking to him?**

* * *

 **FRANKIE to ANNIE, 1529:**

 **While I'm sure you have your reasons, violence is rarely the solution. It's possible that I'm misunderstanding the situation, but if there are no mitigating factors I'm unaware of, I'm afraid I can't participate in murdering Britta. I suggest discussion. If diplomacy fails we can consider other options. Also, text messaging is vulnerable to surveillance, subpoena, and seizure, and is admissible in court as evidence; it's thus now doubly inadvisable to murder Britta as ECHELON and the NSA have no doubt already intercepted this conversation. To sum up: I hope you are making a very funny joke.**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1530:**

 **He called me last week with his new number and he said where he was**

 **I was going to tell you**

 **I forgot**

 **Sorrow**

 **Sorry**

 **I'll send you his number**

* * *

 **ANNIE to BRITTA, 1531:**

 **Don't!**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1531:**

 **6175551123**

 **Sorrow I didn't see your message**

* * *

 **ANNIE to BRITTA, 1532:**

 **It's ok**

 **Thanks for not telling him I'm here**

* * *

 **ANNIE to FRANKIE, 1532:**

 **Ha ha! [Nervous laughter emoji] [blush emoji] [nervous laughter emoji] [HA HA emoji]**

* * *

 **BRITTA to ANNIE, 1533:**

 **What are you going to do?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to BRITTA, 1534:**

 **I don't know yet**

* * *

 **FRANKIE to ANNIE, 1535:**

 **I'm glad we had this discussion about your wholly fictive interest in contract killing. However I note we are getting away from the topic at hand, which I understand to be the current whereabouts of Jeff Winger. I'm sufficiently ignorant of context as to be unable to volunteer specific advice or assistance. Rest assured I am standing by, at the ready, to aid you however I can. My offered assistance extends beyond the polite minimum; if it were necessary for your purposes, I would willingly expend vacation days. You are a person I value.**

* * *

 **ANNIE to FRANKIE, 1537:**

 **Thank you Frankie [smiling emoji]!**

 **I'll call you later**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 1538:**

 **Are you not upset about Troy's new haircut?**

 **It's a terrible haircut.**

* * *

MIT was more mazelike than Jeff had expected, but only slightly. He took the subway across the river to Cambridge wandered into the campus in search of 'the Trapezoid Building.' One building was in the shape of a triangle. Another was long and thin and appeared from the outside to consist entirely of glassed-in hallways that served no purpose beyond blocking pedestrian access from one side of it to the other. It took Jeff about ten minutes to give up on self-navigating to the point of pulling up a campus map on his phone, which helped but didn't solve all his problems. He passed the same bare courtyard with rusting lawn furniture three times before he found the only building that, according to his phone, was trapezoidal in shape, nestled among some disused tennis courts.

Circling the building, he could confirm its trapezoidal nature. At this point, he faced a new problem: five different sets of doors in, all of which were various kinds of locked. Two of the three were, in fact, chained shut, and the other three were bare panes of metal, with no exterior knobs, locks, or handles, and signs saying NO ACCESS. There were some windows that looked in to classrooms, which while unoccupied didn't seem abandoned, so…

"You look," said someone behind him, "like you want to get into the Trapezoid."

Jeff turned away from the window. A small redheaded woman was smiling at him, a little smugly, with her arms folded. Jeans and sweatshirt and backpack meant too casual to be faculty, but she was definitely older than a typical college student.

"Yeah," Jeff said, straightening up a little. "Is it an intelligence test, or something?"

She gave a little half-shrug. "You have to take a tunnel." The woman pointed to one of the non-trapezoidal buildings on the other side of the tennis courts. "There's one under the tennis courts. You can get in over there."

Jeff tried to look charmingly bemused rather than how he felt, which was frustrated. "Probably a dumb question, but why?"

"I have no idea. Maybe it used to be a security thing, maybe it's some kind of prank that's lasted. It's been like that the whole time I've been here, though." She cocked her head at him. "You obviously need an escort in."

"Well, if you happen to be going that way…"

"I could be," she said, as if mulling it over.

Jeff forced a chuckle. "I'd be grateful," he said. "I'm looking for Russell Borchert."

"Oh yeah?" The woman sounded surprised. She turned towards the building she'd pointed to, indicating he should follow. "I didn't think he knew anybody. He was in a bunker for thirty years, supposedly."

Jeff smiled to himself. "My name's Jeff Winger," he said. "I'm the guy who found him."

The woman did a double take and her face lit up. "You're the guy from the bunker?"

"So you do know him?"

She nodded dismissively. "Yeah, I'm a postdoc in the Spence lab down the hall from him… Linda Kleiman."

"Well, thanks for taking pity on me, Linda," Jeff said. "I don't know what I would have done…"

"You should have emailed Russ, he'd have given you directions."

Jeff bristled a bit at her imperious tone. "He just said the top floor of the Trapezoid Building. I don't have his email."

"Well then… are you visiting from Colorado? It was Colorado, wasn't it?" She winced. "Shit, was it Nebraska? Did I say something offensive? Is it super rude to get middle-of-the-country states mixed up?"

"It's fine. It was Colorado. And no, I moved here last month. I'm an attorney downtown. I didn't know Borchert was here until he contacted me."

"Wow, okay. So, tell me, Jeff, is it true that…" Linda considered. "I'm not sure which part of Russ's story is the least plausible."

"Oh, it's all pretty unlikely," Jeff assured her. "And it did all happen. A bunch of really unlikely things happened, one right after the other. It's possible the unlikely things he told you were different from the unlikely things that happened; I can't vouch for them without knowing what he said."

As they chatted, Linda led Jeff into a nearby building, with cracked linoleum floors. She took him through two unlabeled doors, and down a flight of stairs to a wide cement tunnel. "It's this way," she said as she brought him down the tunnel, passing a sign with an arrow designating the way to BUILDING A20.

"A20 is the Trapezoid?"

"Hmm? Yeah… here we are." She came to a halt at yet another unlabelled door, which turned out to conceal an elevator. An unexpectedly small elevator… "It's a little tight, be careful," she warned as she stepped inside.

A heavy padded curtain lined the small box of the elevator. Jeff pressed against it, trying to stay out of Linda's personal space as best he could. She was making no corresponding attempt to keep away from him, he noted without pleasure.

As the elevator ascended, it made a noise like a quacking duck, which Linda ignored. "I'd love to hear about the actual unlikely things that happened," she said. "Russ's story kind of makes no sense in places, and he doesn't like questions…"

Jeff grunted noncommittally; he didn't want to encourage her. They lapsed into silence for the rest of the ride up.

The elevator door opened, six stories up, and Linda slipped out into a high airy hallway. "Russ's office is down there," she said.

"Thanks," Jeff said with a nod.

Linda looked at him expectantly for a moment, while Jeff tried to pretend he didn't realize she was waiting for him to ask her out. Then she spoke. "You don't have Russ's email, so, what's yours?"

A vague sense of obligation led Jeff to give her his work email. She smiled, took out her phone, and jabbed at it for a few seconds. His phone buzzed.

"Now you have my email," she said brightly. "In case you get lost again."

"Heh, thanks…"

"My only request is that you tell me the straight dope on the whole bunker thing." She pointed at him. "You hear me?" she asked, her tone full of mock scolding.

He nodded. "Absolutely. I'll email you."

"You'd better, Jeff." She smiled at him before turning and walking the other way.

 _She certainly was friendly_ , Jeff thought. Wasn't that the kind of thing — an attractive, at least loosely age-appropriate, and not very subtle woman expressing interest — wasn't that what he was supposed to want? Annie was hundreds of miles away and off the table, so…? He sighed, unable to convince himself for even an instant that he had any interest in Linda Kleiman.

* * *

"So I say to Mabel, I say — I'll finish this later, Annie just got home." Vicki glanced up from the laptop on the coffee table as Annie came in with an armload of groceries.

"Say hi to her for me." Neil's voice sounded oddly tinny as it emanated from the laptop's small speakers.

"Hi Neil!" Annie called as she passed through the living room to the apartment's kitchen.

"Neil says hi," Vicki announced.

If this had happened during her first or second week of living with Vicki, Annie probably would have tried to explain that she'd heard Neil perfectly well. But after nearly a month of close cohabitation, Annie knew that the best thing to do was just nod and continue on into the kitchen.

"Ask her," Neil suggested. From context Annie guessed the instruction was intended for Vicki and she was the object.

"I'm doing it, okay?" Vicki stage-whispered. She cleared her throat and turned towards the kitchen. "Annie! Hi! How's it going?"

"Fine," Annie said cautiously, her back to Vicki as she opened a cupboard and began transferring cans from her bag. "I'm putting away groceries."

"That's great. Do you have Jeff's contact information yet?"

Annie spun around, shocked. "What?"

"Because Neil loaned him a first edition of _Deities & Demigods_, with the Lovecraftian pantheon included? And we just found out that it's worth money if it's in decent shape, and it was in decent shape when he gave it to him, so… are you okay?" Vicki's voice rose higher and higher over the course of the sentence. She leaned forward, peering at Annie. "Jeez, you just went white as a sheet."

"She blanched?" Neil asked.

"That is what I said. I've never seen… okay." Vicki sprang up off the couch and walked the four steps or so to where Annie was standing.

"What?" Annie asked, or tried to, as the kitchen floor buckled under her.

"Here we go, back to the couch…" Vicki seemed to have sea legs. She supported Annie as she led her to the couch. When she released Annie, she tumbled down and landed heavily in front of the laptop.

"Are you okay?" Neil asked her.

"I'm fine," Annie said, or rather, she tried to say — speaking a whole sentence like that seemed like an awful lot of trouble. Neil and Vicki said some more things, but Annie didn't bother listening to them; she was too busy focusing on not falling off the couch.

Then there was a glass of water in her hand, and Vicki was sitting next to her, holding the bottom of the water and guiding it to her lips. As she drank the water, Annie began to feel better.

"I knew Jeff was a sore spot," Vicki said, "but wow, you looked like you were going to faint."

"I'm okay," Annie said.

"She even faints like a princess," Vicki told Neil.

"Is she okay? I can't really see," Neil said.

"I'm okay," Annie said again. "I just got Jeff's new number today, is the… anyway, yeah. I can give you his number, Neil."

"Finish that water," Vicki ordered. "And I'm going to make you some toast." She stared at Annie until Annie nodded weakly, then nodded to Neil on the screen of the laptop and rose.

"Uh. I figure it's a long shot that he still has it. I know he wasn't all that into gaming…" Neil trailed off. "Uh, are you not eating food, or something?"

"I'm okay, I'm okay, it's just been a stressful day."

"You've got to do at least minimal self-care, you know?" On the laptop screen Neil looked concerned. He and Annie sat in telepresent silence for a few moments. "Vicki told me about you and Jeff."

"She did?" Annie swallowed the last of the water.

"I didn't tell him anything!" Vicki called from the kitchen.

"She told me a little," Neil said. "She said you two had broken up —"

Annie shook her head no. "We weren't —"

"They weren't together, Neil, Jesus! I told you that!"

"Right, right. You aren't talking to him, I meant. I knew that. That's got to be rough, man. The gaming book isn't really important, if this is a sore spot…"

Annie closed her eyes and debated whether to tell them. "I saw Jeff today, actually. Like, an hour ago. He's in the city. He didn't follow me here," she added quickly. "He thinks my job is in DC apparently. He didn't see me. He was at the coffee shop by the FBI office, and I saw him. He doesn't know I'm here."

"Whoa," said Neil.

Vicki emerged from the kitchen. In her hands was a plate bearing two lightly toasted slices of bread, with something brown and syrupy spread on them. "Vegemite," she announced. She offered the plate to Annie, expression oddly intent.

Annie looked at the toast, and at Vicki, and at the toast again. It smelled of apples. Reluctantly she picked up one of the slices, and took a bite. It tasted like apples… "This isn't Vegemite, is it?"

"It's apple butter. But you thought it was Vegemite and you took some anyway! Good for you!" Vicki set the plate down on the coffee table, next to the laptop. "You can handle that, you can handle anything!"

"Um…"

"Have you ever had Vegemite? It's disgusting. Garbage," Vicki said scornfully as she sat back down on the couch. "Garbage people eat it."

"…Thanks?" Annie took another bite of toast. "You don't seem surprised to hear Jeff is here," she said with her mouth full.

Vicki snorted. "Obviously. I knew he was here. Your stupid not-boyfriend wouldn't let you move to a new city without stalking you about it." She picked up the second slice of toast. "I told you that. Are you sure he doesn't know you're here?"

"Pretty sure…"

"It won't last. Someone will tell him, or he'll spot you in a coffee shop the way you spotted him, or you'll break down and call him, or something." Vicki gestured towards Neil. "Tell her I'm right."

"Hmm. Maybe," Neil said. "I don't, uh, I don't really know."

"Well, I know," Vicki said confidently. "And if she can handle Vegemite, she can handle Jeff Winger trying to weasel his way back into her life."

"This isn't actually Vegemite, though…"

"But you didn't know that! You're fearless!"


	8. I'm Probably Not Going to See Him Again

"Hello? Doctor Borchert? Russell?" Jeff called as he moved from room to room. This whole end of the fifth floor was a set of connected labs and workrooms. Electronic components, cables, and nondescript beige boxes littered countertops. A sun-faded calendar nailed to one wall claimed the current month was June of 1994. There was no response, so Jeff called out again. "You've managed to pretty much recreate your bunker, I see…"

"What's that?" A middle-aged man several inches shorter than Jeff suddenly emerged from behind a wall. It took Jeff a moment to realize it was Borchert — he looked completely different without all that hair. He might not have recognized Borchert at all, had the man's face not lit up on seeing him. "Jeff Winger! The love bomb himself! Precisely the man I wanted — what good fortune is this? The only other man Raquel ever responded to!" Borchert closed the distance between them and grasped Jeff by the lapels of his suit in a gesture that might have been threatening but for the broad grin. "You look well. You're very welcome in my lab!"

"Thanks," Jeff said hesitantly. "It took a little bit of digging to find you. This department's web page hasn't been updated since 2002."

"Bah! Internet. Inter-not, I say!" Borchert chortled. "Come, come, we have much to do!" He tugged at Jeff's sleeve, gesturing towards the doorway he'd entered through.

"I just wanted to ask you about Pierce Hawthorne," Jeff began.

"Not important! Nothing is important next to Scarlett!" Borchert turned to smile at Jeff in a way probably intended to reassure. "That's a lovely suit, by the way. I need you to take it off."

"What? I'm not…" Jeff let himself be led into the next room, but his goodwill only went so far. "Who's Scarlett? How did you get here?"

"Who's Scarlett, he asks!" Borchert laughed to himself. "This is Scarlett!" He gestured to an unimpressive heap of components wired together and spread across several racks on a table. "More than five hundred times the flops! Thirty-two _thousand_ times as many words of memory as Raquel!"

"Named after Scarlett Johansson, I'm guessing?" Jeff asked.

"I really liked _Her_." Borchert beamed. "Did you see that? A whole movie about a man and his computer! What a glorious and nonjudgemental future I've come to! Now get over here," he said, holding up some kind of large vise-like device studded with electrodes, "I need to clamp this to your spine."

"Whoa!" Jeff put his hands up in a 'stop' motion. "That's a no-go. There's no chance I'm going to end up sealed in this lab forever, so I'm exercising my right to refuse."

"Oh!" Borchert sighed petulantly. "But… but _science_ , Jeff!"

Jeff sighed. "You sealed yourself away from the world for more than thirty years. Believe me, I have a lot of respect for you. It takes a lot of strength to push away temptation like that. But Dr. Borchert, sir…"

"You can call me Russ," Borchert said, "if you let me clamp your spiii-iiine…" The last word was delivered in a cajoling singsong. He shook the vise hopefully.

"Dr. Borchert," Jeff repeated, "I respect and admire your devotion to your work. But I'm here for another reason."

"Well, what is it?"

"Pierce Hawthorne," Jeff said again. "And how you got from Greendale to… here." He gestured around the room. "I'm guessing MIT doesn't just let scientists come in from the street to camp in their unused office spaces."

"Oh, that," Borchert said dismissively. "It's… hold on." A crafty expression crossed his face. "Russ, you're a genius! Bait the hook and then tell him about Hawthorne after he's already clamped!"

"Did you mean to say that out loud?"

"What?" Borchert's face fell. "Did I say that out loud? I'm sorry. I was alone for a long time, and there was no need to self-censor. I could just wear what I wanted, sleep where I wanted, hoot like a monkey for a weekend if the fancy struck…"

"You have something to tell me about Hawthorne," Jeff insisted. He flashed back, unwillingly, to the half-dozen times he and Annie had investigated some implausible caper together. This would have been much more fun if she were there, but she wasn't and that was what he'd wanted, so… He blinked, refusing to allow himself to go into an emotional reverie. "Tell me. Please."

"Clamp first," said Borchert. "Don't worry, it won't hurt. Were you worried it would hurt? Should I have called it something other than a clamp?"

"It's not a big plus." Jeff loosened his tie and started to take off his jacket. "If I do this, will you answer my questions?"

"Absolutely! Quid pro quo," Borchert declared. He pulled something on the vise in his hands, and it spread outward, opening into a jointed rod. "Now hold still, because if I get this crooked it'll mess up the results, and your shirt, and maybe your back…"

Jeff was beginning to regret it already. He gritted his teeth and Borchert pressed the rod against his upper back, securing it against his shirt via some method Jeff couldn't see.

"There we are… good!" Borchert circled around Jeff and moved to a nearby terminal. "Now to calibrate Scarlett we need to ask you a series of questions about your romantic history…"

Jeff _really_ regretted it already. "I didn't agree to that —"

"Oh, don't worry." Borchert, typing into the terminal, waved away his concerns. "You don't need to answer the questions. It's like — have you seen _Blade Runner_?" He spun around. "Brilliant movie about a man in love with an artificially created woman?"

"Have you spent the whole time you've been out of the bunker getting caught up on movies?" Jeff asked.

"Only the ones about relationships between men and artificial women. Like, oh, anything with…" He trailed off. "Who's an actress known for having a lot of plastic surgery? Like the modern Candy Rialson? Never mind, never mind, I was trying to make a joke… I was saying you don't need to answer the questions, it's like the Voight-Kampff test in _Blade Runner_ ; Scarlett will measure your autonomic responses to the questions. We take that response and generate more questions, until Scarlett has your number. You mostly prefer women, am I right?"

"What?"

"That wasn't part of the calibration. In this crazy-permissive future era everybody is weirdly progressive on gay rights. Weirdly regressive about a lot of other things. Not important at the moment. Tell me — this is part of the calibration now — why aren't you with the woman you love?"

Jeff reeled. The memory of Annie was suddenly overwhelming. Annie smiling, Annie cross, Annie asking _since when do Human Beings decide which dreams are worthwhile?_

"How did you feel the last time you saw her? Was the last wedding you attended a joyous occasion or did you think the marriage was doomed?" Borchert's questions came rapid-fire. His back was to Jeff, and he was peering intently at the terminal screen. "When you look back at how you've spent the last five years, what are you most ashamed of? Picture the woman you love. What do you love most about her? What's the thing you like the least about her? If I told you you would never see her again, how would you feel? If I told you she was in the next room, reading your subconsciously-projected answers to all these questions on a screen, how would you feel? If I told you I was her in disguise, how implausible would you rate that on a scale of 1 to 3?"

"Uh…"

Borchert turned and looked Jeff in the eye. "More seriously. She doesn't love you. She's moved on. She's happy without you. Are you okay with that?"

"I don't… you…" Jeff sputtered. He felt himself start sweating.

A green LED lit up on one of the beige boxes. "And we're done!" cried Borchert. "You can take the clamp off now."

Hurriedly Jeff pulled off the contraption, wincing as he heard a scratching sound tearing it from his back — had it caught a thread and ripped his shirt? He tried to feel for a tear. "What the hell?" His breathing was heavy.

"Scarlett's very persnickety," Borchert explained. "She needs a lot of data to mull over before she comes to a conclusion. We'll need to process this data and set up the calibration. Should be done by, oh, day after tomorrow. There a good day next week you can come in for the actual interview?"

"I'm not… Dr. Borchert —"

"Call me Russ!"

"Russ!" Jeff cried. "I wore your stupid back brace, are you going to answer my questions now or are you going to jerk me around some more?"

"Oh, Jeff, don't be that way," Borchert cooed. "I was on my own for such a long time —"

"Right, right," grumbled Jeff. "Decades in the bunker. You said. Tell me about Pierce Hawthorne. When did you meet him?"

"Oh, we've never met." Borchert pointed to a doorway. "You want to sit down in my office? I've got some Mr Pibb in there. You know they still make Mr Pibb? I was so relieved…"

"No, no, no. I don't want any Mr Pibb," Jeff snapped. "If you never met Pierce Hawthorne, what did you do with him?"

"We were in business together for about ten minutes right before I went into the bunker. There was this idea to use CB radio to let computers talk to one another… nothing came of it." He shrugged. "Long time ago, obviously. Before we knew Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father! Did you know Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father?"

"I did, yeah. What about more recently? Anything since we got you out of the bunker?"

"No, no. I spoke to his lawyer a few times — he arranged my current sinecure here in the Trapezoid Building. Hawthorne's in Paris, now, I think."

Jeff perked up. "Paris?"

Borchert winced. "No, my mistake. He perished, that's what it was. He _perished._ I have the number for his lawyers somewhere, or I guess his estate's lawyers, he had a different firm back in the '70s… Biddle Heath. I remember the name because it's so stupid." He chuckled to himself. "Biddle Heath, what is that? Anyway… what brings you out here to Boston, Jeff?"

"I'm an attorney at Biddle Heath," Jeff said with a sigh. "I don't understand it any more than you do.

* * *

At ten that night, as promised, Annie called Frankie.

"Hello Annie, what do you need?" Frankie's tone was businesslike.

"Um…" Annie didn't have a ready answer for that one. "I don't know. Thanks for texting me this afternoon, that was really sweet."

"It probably goes without saying but I meant every word. Can you hold on one second while I switch to my bluetooth headset?"

"Sure." Annie lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.

"Great, much better. I'm at a Wal-Mart on the far side of Denver shopping for coloring and rainy-day activity books," Frankie explained. "For Craig."

"Ah," said Annie, understanding immediately. "That sounds like an important job."

"Oh, it is! You have to hit the right middle ground between sufficiently time-consuming so that he'll be occupied long enough, and not so difficult as to lead to frustration and tantrums. The World's Easiest Crossword Puzzles were a big misfire. Now I mix in word searches; that's worked well so far… the thing is, he's a very stupid man. Sweet, but stupid."

"I know."

"I would never say that to his face. Not again, anyway. But he makes terrible choices when he's left unsupervised, like approving a foreign-language course in Pig Latin, or repainting the cafeteria in colors he deems appropriate to the theme of that week's festivities, or buying magic beans from a traveling salesman because he thinks they're good workshop materials for a class in legume horticulture that the traveling salesman tricked him into thinking we were already offering. These examples are specific because they draw on my personal experiences."

"Uh huh."

"But he's a good man and ever since he came out, first as gay and then as political, firing him has just been completely off the table. And it's not like we pay him very much… I'm holding two activity books. Do you think he'd prefer _Frozen_ or a more inclusive Disney princesses theme?"

"Why not get both?"

"Hmm, good idea… I'm sorry, listen to me yammering on about what happens to be in front of me. You seemed upset when you texted me earlier. I spoke with Britta and she eventually explained some of the context."

"Yeah, I mean, it's not a big deal," Annie claimed. "This is a big city and just because I bumped into him once doesn't mean it'll ever happen again."

"Well, obviously I don't recommend confronting him," Frankie said. "Jeff Winger is, and I say this with at least as much affection as my earlier statements about Craig, an emotional mess and your relationship with him bristled with codependence."

Annie sighed. "You didn't know him before…"

"Before what, exactly? Again, extrapolating from what I've gleaned through conversation with Britta, he seems to have always been the same heavy-drinking, self-centered, lazy…" Frankie cleared her throat. "Again, let me stress, I say all of this with affection."

"That's… you're not wrong, exactly, but that's ignoring a whole… Jeff's better than that. He's been through a rough year. Our friend Pierce died, and then our friend Troy left, and then he turned forty, and then…" Annie sighed, remembering that terrible day. "And then Shirley moved to Georgia. This was all before you met him. He's been in a bad way. But really, he's smart and funny and he pretends he's not generous…"

"I really didn't see very much evidence of that in the time I knew him," Frankie interrupted. "Bitter, closed-off, easily enraged: these are the traits I would ascribe to him."

"See, though, a year ago, there was…" Annie tried to think how to explain it. "You know about Borchert, right?"

"The Greendale board attempted to sell the campus to Subway, but you and Abed and some of your friends dug up the school's founder to prevent the sale." Frankie paused before continuing. "Also there was a magic door, which I don't claim to understand but you must realize I've been told the story by Britta and Craig, who aren't very reliable."

"Jeff and Britta were engaged at the time," Annie said.

There was no response from Frankie.

"Hello?"

"That doesn't make any sense," Frankie said. "Jeff Winger and Britta Perry? I don't see it."

"I know, right?" Annie asked breathlessly. "I mean," she continued, calming down, "up to that point Jeff and I… we weren't _together_ , but we'd had this whole _thing_ …"

"Mmm-hmm." Frankie sounded skeptical.

"And that kind of broke it… and that kind of broke Jeff… and… the Jeff Winger you know isn't the real Jeff Winger," she told Frankie firmly.

"People do change —"

"We'd started texting again," Annie said, more wistfully than she meant to. "Texting or talking almost every day. I'd forgotten how much I missed that. And then he up and vanished because he didn't want… I think he didn't want me to leave him again, for good this time. So he left me first."

"Which, I would argue, speaks directly to the toxic nature of the relationship —"

"I know, and that's kind of true, but… there's a lot more going on that you never saw. Jeff and I are —" Her voice caught. " _Were_ , we _were_ close — in a way that I don't think either of us have ever been with anybody else."

Frankie, on the other end of the line, was silent for several seconds. "Annie, can I be frank?" she asked, finally.

"Of course."

"You know I care deeply about you and wish you only joy and happiness," Frankie said, her tone serious. "What I'm hearing from you now distresses me. Your ready defense of Jeff and the obvious emotional depths this conversation is stirring in you together suggest that you will, sooner or later, welcome him back into your life with open arms and closed eyes."

"Frankie, I haven't decided anything…"

"To be honest, at the moment I fear that by broaching this topic with you and attempting to warn you away from him, I've merely galvanized your ardor. You say I don't know the real Jeff Winger; I say I've known him for a year. I've known him as he is now, not as he was years ago. And I say fervently that he is wrong for you."

"You don't… I respect your opinion, but you don't…" Annie sighed. Frankie Dart was a smart woman, but she wasn't exactly an expert on matters of the heart.

"I respect your opinion, too!" Frankie assured her. "I realize I don't necessarily have full access to the facts of the matter. I realize you think my characterization of Jeff Winger is overly harsh. And, again, your endorsement carries a lot of weight with me. You've known him longer than I have. But I ask you to recall that on most other topics you consider me a reliable advisor. I have a perspective that is more dispassionate than yours, on this issue. I hope that you bear this in mind in the future. Please, Annie. That's all I ask."

"I haven't… I'm probably not even going to see him again."

"If you do, try to remember what I've said and at least look at him and your situation with clear eyes."

"Okay."

"And when, sorry, _if_ he hurts you again please, please, please don't hesitate to call me. I promise I will not say anything remotely like 'I told you so.' "

"Frankie…"

"I might be wrong. I hope I am! But I don't think I am," Frankie said. "It's much like my position on climate change."


	9. We Make a Great Team

Jeff walked over the bridge from MIT towards his office, and mulled over his next move. He had a client meeting the next morning, but the rest of his day was free, so he didn't hurry. It wasn't that long a walk, anyhow; everything was right on top of everything in Boston, compared to Greendale.

Rather than talk to himself like a crazy man, he called Mark.

"What's up, Jeff? You want to grab some lunch? There's a Thai place I haven't taken you to, they do a killer larb gai —"

"Nah, I'm out of the office. Just finished talking to Russ Borchert at MIT. Very friendly. Still weird… it's sort of like Greendale follows me wherever I go…"

"Greendale?" Mark asked, perplexed. "Oh, you mean the school, not the town."

"Yeah. No new info about Pierce."

"Greendale probably wouldn't follow you so much if you didn't spend so much time thinking about it. And about the people from it. And by people I mean, dot dot dot." Mark paused. "I mean Annie."

"Oh, not you too," Jeff complained. "Borchert was asking about her… listen, talk to me about something that isn't this."

"Okay, buddy." Mark cleared his throat. "Apropos of nothing I was pricing apartments within commuting distance of the J Edgar Hoover Building. You know it's surprisingly expensive, but…"

"Cash!"

"Fine, fine. New case. You ready for this?"

"Absolutely." He needed something else to think about.

"Let me tell you a story — the best kind of story, a tale of two corporate entities and a regulatory agency."

"Everybody's favorite," agreed Jeff gamely.

"The FCC controls licenses for the wireless spectrum, as you know," Mark continued. "Radio waves. Wireless bandwidth. Cell phones, GPS, FM and AM radio, shortwave, broadcast television, wifi, they all broadcast at particular frequencies, right? And no two things can broadcast at the same frequency, or they interfere with one another. So the government assigns portions of the spectrum, selling some of it at auction, setting some of it aside for military use, and so on. Or technically they auction or sell licenses for monopoly use of portions of the spectrum."

"With you so far," Jeff said.

"One technology company, Via, owns the license for a chunk of the spectrum. Another technology company, Interslice, wants to buy it off them. Via's never done anything with it since they bought the license so they're happy to sell. Interslice, the villains of our little parable, are claiming that they should be able to buy it discounted because the FCC put a restriction on uses of that portion of the spectrum that might interfere with the GPS satellites. They've lobbied the FCC to rescind Via's license so they can pick it up for a song, which is obvious hanky-panky, and worse than that, they've conned a group of poor, undeserving-of-this-treatment Via's shareholders to file suit against the Via board, claiming that the board's refusal to just roll over and accept Interslice's lowball bid was a breach of all the usual things minority shareholders claim breaches of.

"So our client is fighting off a shareholder lawsuit, an insultingly low bid from Interslice, _and_ the FCC breathing down our necks. Into that breach step the heroic warrior-poets of Biddle Heath!"

"This might be a little outside our wheelhouse," Jeff observed. "It sounds very complicated and also very nerdy. Does the Via CEO have a son in a frat who accidentally bought some cocaine thinking it was powdered sugar? That's more in my line."

"I don't know. I mean, you're right, this isn't our usual bag," Mark admitted. "Will brought it in; I think he did some work for Via last year. But we're getting some hired guns on it, corporate litigation specialists."

"Will Stone originated the case?" Something in Mark's description rang a bell in Jeff's head.

"Yeah, yeah. So I need you to go down to Delaware and meet our new co-counsel next week. And you know…." Mark's tone turned cajoling. "It's only two stops on Amtrak from Wilmington to DC…"

"Mark," Jeff said urgently. "What's the full name of our client?"

"What? Uh… hold on… 'Via Laser Lotus Telecommunications, LLC.' Man, Will picked the least interesting part of the name to shorten with. I'm totally calling our side Laser Lotus… Why do you ask?"

"Is the CEO's name… uh…" Jeff concentrated for a moment. A hawthorn was a tree… "Is it Alder or anything like that? Oak, or Willow, or…"

"It's Ryan Boothe, with an E at the end. Why, he again asked his friend politely, do you want to know?" A slight edge had crept into Mark's tone, belying his genial self-narration.

"No reason," said Jeff. "Listen, I'm not going to make it back to the office this afternoon. Email me everything and I'll read it at home, all right?"

"…Sure," Mark said cautiously. "Listen, I'll lay off the DC talk, I can tell it's bugging you."

"Thanks. I mean… thanks."

"You sure you don't want to grab a late lunch?"

"Yeah, sorry. I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

Rather than head back to the office Jeff took a right and wandered into the botanical garden. He wasn't sure whether it was technically part of Boston Common,, or not — he sort of hoped it was, as the stretch of park called the Common had otherwise been surprisingly unimpressive. The garden at least had the swan boats. He took a footpath down towards the water, where there was a view of the boat dock.

Jeff imagined Annie walking beside him, bundled against the crisp fall air, smiling at the sunlight and the leaves that hadn't yet changed and all the people walking dogs. He wondered, not for the first time that day, what she'd have said if she were there.

 _You should move on, too. You should ask out that girl Linda._

"I don't want to ask out that girl Linda," Jeff muttered, quietly enough not to disturb any passersby.

 _Well, you should. You should want to, and you should do it._ He imagined Annie tilting her head up, eyes closed, basking in the sun.

"I don't want to." Jeff sat on a bench and stared at ducks.

Imaginary Annie sat lightly next to him. _When was the last time you went on a date? Was it before or after the second paintball game?_

"It wasn't that long ago," Jeff scoffed. "I graduated. You graduated. You went off to be a hospital administrator —"

 _Pharmaceutical rep._

He shrugged. "I dated. I dated a bunch of women between starting my law practice and losing it."

 _Liar. You didn't._ Imaginary Annie glowered at him in a way he found irresistibly cute.

"You don't know that."

 _Real Annie doesn't know that, but I'm just a voice in your head so I know everything you do. You passed up a half-dozen opportunities, not just for casual sex, but relationships. Maybe nothing that would have worked out, but you didn't even try. And here you're doing it again. You need to move on, Jeff. Wasn't that one of the reasons you fled Greendale?_

Jeff said nothing.

 _I've moved on,_ Imaginary Annie continued. _I'm down in Washington, DC, working at the FBI. I wear sharp suits and I get up early and I get things done. I turn a lot of heads, and I've taken your advice and I'm trying to forget you, so I go on dates._

Jeff said nothing.

 _Or I went on dates,_ mused Imaginary Annie. _Actually I still go on dates, but there's just the one guy. His name is, I don't know, New Jeff. I've moved on, remember. He's tall and he's ten years younger than you and of course he's head over heels for me, because he's not an idiot. And he's got a good career doing something technical with computers at the FBI or maybe a civilian contractor. New Jeff gets along well with his family and he doesn't drink and his first impulse is never to run away from his problems —_

"Good," muttered Jeff. "I hope that's true."

 _New Jeff and I will be moving in together before the end of the year, because unlike some people, New Jeff isn't afraid of commitment. Five years from now we'll be married with a couple of kids and I'll be an FBI agent and we'll work together to balance both our careers with our home life. We make a great team, New Jeff and I._

Jeff winced. "I'm just happy you're happy."

 _Oh, come on, Vince Vaughn!_ Imaginary Annie was scornful. _You can be honest with me. Lie to anyone else, but be honest with me._

"I do want her to be happy." Jeff watched a duck flap its wings ineffectually, maybe begging for breadcrumbs he didn't have. "I mean, yes. I also want her to miss me like I miss her. I want her to pine for me. I want her to track me down — she could have by now if she wanted to — and slap me and tell me I was wrong to do what I did. I'd love to have been wrong. But I want her to be happy."

 _You wheedling jackrabbit! I like you! Knowing my friend Jeff makes me happy,_ pointed out Imaginary Annie. _You think I texted you basically every day the whole time I was in DC because I didn't like it when you texted me back? You think I was doing that just to be nice? I don't do anything just to be nice._

"Okay, that's not true. You do nice things for the sake of it all the time. You…" Jeff tried to think of an example. "You did that play for Chang, and then you quit that play for Chang."

 _I only quit because I thought the director would beg me to come back. I didn't do the play for Chang, I did it for myself. You remember how snippy I was the night of the performance._

"I remember trying to make you feel better."

 _You remember making me feel better, you mean_. Imaginary Annie glared crossly at him. _That night was sixty percent a date._

"It wasn't."

 _Forty percent, then._ She shrugged. _You were just as selfish as I was — you only wanted me to feel better because it made you feel better to see me happy._ Imaginary Annie slid an arm around him and, snuggling close, rested her head on his shoulder. _Because you love me._

"I wasn't denying that," he whispered inaudibly.

 _And you know I love you. Yes, I moved on, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear from you! Get off your ass and goddamn call me!_ That's right — Annie is mad enough to swear about this!

"I deleted your number."

 _You memorized my number. And my email. And the number of my desk at the Hoover building in DC, where I don't need to remind you I'm still working. It's not like you don't know how to find me._ Imaginary Annie seized Jeff's phone and jabbed in Annie's number, which is to say, Jeff input Annie's number on his phone. They — he — stared at it. _Just hit send,_ she implored him. _You're not just hurting yourself, you're hurting me!_

"No!" Jeff said, loudly enough that a passing jogger turned her head. He put the phone away hurriedly. "If I call now, just as you're starting to hit things off with New Jeff —"

 _There is no New Jeff! I made him up!_ He imagined her lightly swatting him on the arm, a half-teasing reprimand.

"We don't know that."

Jeff sat on the bench and stared at ducks until Imaginary Annie gave up.

* * *

After work Annie didn't feel like going home, so she wandered downtown for a while to think. Every so often she thought of something she wanted to tell Jeff, and she'd take out her phone and send him a quick text.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1716:**

 **I can't believe you don't know I'm here.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **Are you sure you don't know?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1721:**

 **Britta said you didn't but it's not like you wouldn't be able to fool her**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **Are you watching me?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1739:**

 **You know I have a date**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I was trying to pretend I was excited about it**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I didn't get coffee this morning because I don't want to see him**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1758:**

 **It's kind of cold here today but you know that already don't you?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **We could be walking through Boston like this together**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **If you weren't such a jerky jerkface self-centered baby**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1803:**

 **I almost called you twice today**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1806:**

 **I won't! I won't let you make me!**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **You're right, I do sound like a child. I don't care, though. I refuse to call you.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **That's what you said you wanted**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

As the sun began to set she drifted the few blocks south towards Boston Common, which she'd never been in before. It was a pretty enough park, not particularly large, or particularly well-lit. She walked along the edge of the park, crossing the street to a statue of a duck with ducklings that seemed familiar, and then continued along a paved path by a pond.

She sat on a bench under a streetlamp. With a heavy sigh she stared out at the darkening water.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1812:**

 **It's been barely a day since I saw you and**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I was going to say I was already over it**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **But what's the use in lying?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW NUMBER DON'T CALL THIS WHY AM I EVEN SAVING IT?) to ANNIE, 1814:**

 **INCOMING CALL**

 **SLIDE TO ACCEPT**

* * *

Stunned, she dropped the phone. It fell onto the pavement in front of the bench. Annie bent down to pick it up again. As she straightened back up, phone still ringing, she saw him. About fifty yards away, across the pond; there were people she wouldn't be able to recognize from that far off but he wasn't one of them. He was seated at another bench, phone pressed against his ear as he stared intently at her.

Annie froze, and they sat there, looking at one another, until Jeff's call went to her voicemail. Then she snapped out of it and tried to call him back, and he was trying to call her again at the same time, and whether he took her call or she took his didn't really matter.

"Hello?"


	10. That Was Years Ago And I Was Drunk

TO: [ Abed Nadir x]

CC:

BCC:

SUBJECT: Going dark

Thu, 20 August 2015 at 9:35am

Abed — As you may already know, Annie isn't returning to Greendale; after a short visit this weekend she'll be returning to Washington DC to work full-time at the FBI. If she hasn't already told you about this, please do me the favor of responding as though you were hearing it for the first time when she does; it's her news to tell you, not mine.

On a closely related note, I am leaving Greendale forever, removing myself from social media, changing my phone number, and closing this email account. I've realized that there's nothing tying me to Greendale any longer, and I need to move on. I won't be reachable for some time after I go. Not sure how long. When I think it's safe, I'll contact you.

Goodbye until then,

Jeff

* * *

TO: [Jeffrey Winger x]

CC:

BCC: [Annie Edison x]

SUBJECT: Re: Going dark

Thu, 20 August 2015 at 11:18am

I understand. Good luck.

Abed

PS Troy says hi

* * *

"There must be something you aren't telling me," Abed said into the phone. He stood in the living room of the small LA apartment he shared with Troy, in front of a cabinet full of DVDs of movies that were mostly older than he was.

"No! There's not… we just talked."

Abed scowled. "You just talked, you say. That doesn't make any sense."

"Well, I'm sorry if it seems anticlimactic to you, but yes. We just talked."

"One of two things should have happened. Either you should have run into one another's arms and kissed and spouted trite nonsense about love, or else you should have gotten into a screaming fight that only ended when police intervened."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Abed, but it wasn't like that at all. I told him I wasn't ready to make any kind of commitment, that I was settled in my new life, but that he would always have a special place in my heart. And he said he understood, and that I was the best baker he'd ever had —"

"Hold on, Shirley, I'm getting another call." Abed checked the number: an unfamiliar one, with an area code he didn't recognize. Odds were good it was a wrong number or some kind of telemarketer and/or scam, but the story of Shirley's reunion with her former employer had turned out to be a big letdown. He put Shirley on hold. "Hello?"

"Hello, Abed?"

Abed gasped.

"Abed?" Jeff repeated.

"I was responding appropriately to your dramatic reappearance," Abed said. "Did you get my email? Did you know Troy said hi?"

"What? I don't —" Jeff's voice cracked.

"Jeff, you sound emotionally drained. Are you emotionally drained?"

"Yeah… yeah. I — I didn't know who else to call about this."

Abed really wanted to rattle off his guesses as to what might have put Jeff through such a wringer, and also been something that his first impulse was to call Abed, rather than someone more emotionally open like Shirley, Britta, Troy, or, of course, Annie. His first guess involved something bad happening to Jeff's mother and his second guess was that Annie had changed her relationship status on Facebook, or something along those lines.

However he was too well-socialized to just blurt these things out; they ran the risk of harming his friend. So instead he just said "It'll probably be okay, Jeff."

"Yeah?"

"Most things are eventually okay."

"This might not be. I think I made a mistake leaving the way I did."

"Yeah, many people thought so," Abed agreed. "I thought you were spinning off. Making a big change. I spun off."

Jeff laughed mirthlessly.

"I have Shirley on hold," Abed said. "I'm going to put you on hold, so I can tell her that you called and you're going through something dramatic."

"Don't —" Jeff began, but he was cut off as Abed put him on hold.

"Sorry to make you wait," Abed told Shirley. "Jeff called. He seems upset."

"Jeff? Jeffrey called?" Shirley sounded extremely intrigued.

"Yes…"

"What's his new number?"

Abed hesitated. Jeff had trusted him enough to call him. "I'm not sure I should give it to you."

"Give me his number, Abed." Shirley's voice was low and menacing. Though she was on the other side of the continent, Abed shivered.

"Jeff was really clear. He wants to cut ties so he doesn't —"

"Abed if you don't give me that man's number I'll reach right through this phone and beat your ass!" Shirley declared.

"You can't —"

"I'm going to count to three. One…"

Abed let out a high-pitched whine.

"Two…"

Abed gave her the number.

"Was that so hard?" Shirley asked, the dark timbre of her voice replaced by a lyric coloratura.

"Don't tell Jeff I gave you his number," Abed implored her, but she'd already hung up. He tried to switch to Jeff, but Jeff too had disconnected.

Rattled, he had to watch both _Ghostbusters_ and _Ghostbusters II_ to calm down.

* * *

"Hello?"

Jeff's mouth was dry. On the one hand, he'd done so much to get away from her, that seeing all his efforts thwarted — seeing Annie, in Boston, having tracked him down — should have stung him.

On the other hand, she'd come for him. She'd chased after him. Until he saw her, he hadn't realized how badly he'd wanted her to find him. He was so, so happy to see her. Also nervous. Suddenly running away from her seemed like such a foolish plan, in retrospect — of course she would find him; she had always been good at that.

"Hello," Annie said. It was hard to tell over the phone but she sounded pleased to see him.

"So this is Boston." Jeff wasn't sure how to proceed — apologize to her? Thank her? Get up and run away, then move again, to Phoenix or Portland or Miami?

"I'm aware." Maybe he'd been mistaken. Maybe she wasn't pleased to see him.

"Listen," he said, because that usually preceded important statements and he was stalling for time. "I appreciate your tracking me —"

"I didn't track you down," she interrupted. "This is a big dumb coincidence, us meeting like this in this stupid cold park." Yeah, his initial impression seemed more and more like wishful thinking. She sounded like she was about to burst into tears, or maybe like she was about to throw something at him.

He chuckled nervously. There had been a time when he was unflappable, when he could have had a conversation like this without a change in his heart rate, when he could have just smiled and shrugged and walked away from Annie Edison, if it came to that. But that time was long gone, years gone. "Well, you found me."

"I wasn't looking for you," she said. "If you had been… you would have found out. My job isn't in Washington. It's here. Downtown. Like five blocks that way." She pointed towards his office, in the city center.

Jeff took a ragged breath and tried to think of something to say.

"I saw you yesterday," Annie continued. "In a coffee shop over there, the one with the big kettle on the sign. I thought _you_ had come to _me_ , actually. But then you were gone, and Britta said —"

"You talked to Britta?" Jeff winced, imagining her opinions and advice to Annie.

"Yes, Jeff, I spoke to her," Annie said coldly. "And I texted. Like people _do_."

"What? I mean, uh…" Jeff cleared his throat. "I didn't know you were here either."

"Yeah, she said that. And Frankie —"

"Frankie, too?"

"Yes, and…" Annie's voice caught. "What the hell, Jeff?"

Jeff's shoulders sagged. "I was… I thought it would be better to just rip the band-aid off and end it clean, but that was wishful thinking."

"More like magical thinking! I got your stupid letter, you know…" Across the pond Annie produced something that was probably a sheet of paper from somewhere that was probably a jacket pocket — darkness and distance made it hard to be definitive. " 'I know you need to move on,' " she read. " 'Maybe someday we can meet again when we've both changed enough it wouldn't be awkward.' " She stared at him, over the water. "This awkward enough for you?"

"You carry that around with you?"

"That's not my point!" Annie tucked the paper away someplace. "My point is that you should have talked to me before — what is this? I don't even know what to — you're impossible!" Her raised voice carried over the pond, reaching him a fraction of a second out of sync with the reproduction over his phone.

"I just wanted to let you go." Jeff winced at the bitter laugh that echoed over the water. "I thought — I think about you every day, and you deserve more than you can get from me."

"You think about me every day," repeated Annie. "Sure Jeff, whatever. I suppose you have that clipping hung up in your office and you can't help seeing it…"

"Next to my bed, actually," Jeff said, "with the picture of you from when I graduated. Back when we were…" He trailed off, realizing that there weren't any good ways to end that sentence. _Sort-of-not-really-make-believe-I-only-realized-it-after-it-was-over dating?_ "Whatever."

"What's that supposed to mean? You missed me? You could have called me any time!"

"I couldn't, though. You would have…" He struggled for a way to explain it. "Well, this would have happened."

Annie scoffed. "You are just mister mixed messages, you know that? Ugh!" He saw her jerk the phone away from her ear as she put her head down for a moment. Then she sat back up. "You act like this, and you almost married Britta!"

"What?" Jeff searched his brain. "Shirley's wedding? That was years ago, and I was drunk, because —"

"No, not Shirley's wedding," she snapped. "The day Subway almost shut the school down. Remember? There was a magic door, and the school board, and 'Borchert Borchert loved computers?' We thought Greendale was ending — and you decided to console yourself in Britta's arms!"

"Oh." Jeff had forgotten about that part of it, in all the confusion and excitement. The last day he'd been able to deny his feelings to himself, and maybe not coincidentally, the last day before she'd frozen him out. "Is that why you hardly spoke to me all last year?"

"What are you talking about?" Annie sounded like she thought it was a non sequitur. "Hardly spoke to you? We were — _are_ — friends! You, me, Abed, Britta —"

Jeff felt a lump growing in his throat as his frustration mounted. Of course they'd been friends, but once the two of them — Jeff and Annie — had been something else. He'd been closer to her than Abed or Britta, not further away, and then she'd reversed it. He struggled to find a way to explain. "The three of you lived together and…"

"And what?" Annie didn't seem interested in giving him a chance to explain. "That makes it okay that my best friend just suddenly vanishes right when I'm moving to a new city and I really needed you?"

Jeff barely heard her. A year's worth of missed opportunities galloped past his mind's eye. He could have said something that night at the speakeasy, or after Chang's _Karate Kid_ , or the night they'd separately snuck out of Britta and Abed's party. They should have left that party together — they should have done _so many_ things together! "God, we didn't even dance at Garrett's wedding!"

"What? What does that have to do with anything?"

He was quiet for a moment. That was dumb, he thought. Back up, come at it from a different angle. "It's getting cold and dark. You want to continue this conversation indoors? There's, uh, there's a bunch of good places over on Columbus."

Annie was silent.

"I make real grown-up lawyer money again. I'll buy you a steak and a lobster and a cheesecake for dessert," he offered. "And wine."

"I don't believe you," she finally said. "I just — I can't."

"What's the —" Jeff began, but his phone clicked. She'd hung up.

Across the pond he could see that she'd stood and was frantically doing something with her phone. She started walking away from the water at an angle, and he raced around the pond to catch her.

Jeff reached Annie just as she opened the door to a car that had pulled up for her — she'd called an inconveniently close Uber. "Annie!" he cried.

She turned to face him with eyes like knives. "Now — now — you want to date me? Go home, Jeff!" Annie snarled, and climbed into the car. She dramatically slammed the door, so dramatically in fact that she had to open and reclose it for it to latch properly.

As the car pulled away, Jeff growled breathlessly and texted her.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1822:**

 **This is so like you**

* * *

He regretted it almost instantly. After all, she wasn't wrong: he did want to date her. The message had been received, and her response was just as clear.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1823:**

 **I've missed you so much. Please.**

* * *

Jeff was pretty sure he knew who was calling but he answered anyway. "Hello?"

"Jeffrey Tobias Winger, what the hell is the matter with you?"

"Hi, Shirley."

"First you run off without telling anybody where you're going! And you don't even tell me to my face, I have to hear about it from Annie!"

"I know."

Shirley fumed. "And then apparently you're talking to Abed, and Britta, and I don't even merit a text message?!"

"I know."

"And you break poor Annie's heart, running off!"

"Believe me," Jeff said with a sigh, "I know."

"Who raised you? Raccoons?"

"Shirley…"

"Or those colorful fish you see in pet stores in the little tiny fishbowls, who can't share space with other fish because they'll murder them? Betta fish? Were you raised by Betta fish, Jeffrey?!"

"I just talked to Annie," Jeff said quietly.

"Hold on, I'm not done being furious with you for vanishing and not telling me!"

"I didn't tell my mother, either," he offered. "Annie did, though, it turns out. Mom gave me a real earful on her behalf last week, I can tell you."

"You don't deserve that girl, Jeffrey."

"I know. I mean, _I know_ I know." He sighed. "And I don't have her, and I never did, so, here we are."

Shirley was silent a moment.

"Aren't you going to rant at me some more?"

"Ugh, what's the use? You keep making terrible choices…" She sighed into the phone, a burst of static in Jeff's ear. "You spoke to Annie? So she knows where you are and how to contact you?"

"Uh, heh, yeah."

"Well, good." Shirley sounded pensive. "You two take a little time apart and you'll both feel better, I can understand that, but you can't unilaterally decide that, it has to be mutual and why am I trying to advise you at this late date? You're a lost cause. Where are you?"

"Working at a law firm in Boston."

"Boston? But —"

"Yeah."

"Oh, Jeffrey."

"I didn't know she was here!" Jeff insisted. "If I had known I would have gone to, I don't know, San Diego."

"It's not too late!"

"I talked to Annie. We bumped into one another earlier tonight. What am I going to do, Shirley? I mean, maybe in retrospect it was a bad idea to do what I did, but I did it, and —"

Shirley was silent for a few seconds, long enough Jeff wondered if she'd hung up on him. "You have options," she finally said.

"I don't!" Jeff replied. "If she calls me I'll come, I can't help it, I'm not strong enough to —"

"It's not about _strong_ , it's about doing right by the people you care about. Do you even know what the right thing is?"

"Yes. I think so." Jeff lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. "Probably. Maybe."

The allusion went over Shirley's head. "Well, no use crying over spilled milk. For starters, you need to just be her friend, Jeffrey. You know how to do that — you've been her friend for years."

"You think?" Jeff sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if she and I were ever really friends, after…" He tried to remember when it had really started. "After I stopped sleeping with Britta, maybe. We weren't dating, but… I didn't have a girlfriend and she was the girlfriend I didn't have."

Shirley hummed noncommittally. "I remember."

"Then she stopped. After you left… it started before you left, actually," he said thoughtfully. "It used to be I'd make a joke about showing a documentary in my class instead of giving a lecture, and she'd give me a hard time, and then one day I made a joke like that and she didn't say anything. So I showed the documentary, I went ahead and did it, because I thought that would get her attention back… and she didn't say anything. I did it again and she didn't say anything. I started drinking during the day and she didn't say anything. She'd moved on."

"Oh, Jeffrey," Shirley said quietly.

"Don't get me wrong, we still hung out. Me and her and Abed and Britta, and Craig… Chang. And Frankie and Elroy."

"I know," Shirley said.

"But whenever there was a thing it would be her and Abed, or her and Abed and Britta, off doing the one thing, and I was stuck at the grown-ups' table with Craig and Frankie. And I was _miserable_." Jeff's eyes filled with tears, and his voice grew thick. "I don't think I even knew until, hell, until I found out she was staying in DC… I mean, coming here, it turns out… that's when I realized just how miserable I was."

"It's okay," cooed Shirley in his ear.

"Because before that, suddenly right before she left she was there, again, like she'd taken a year off from being my not-girlfriend but she was done and she was back, and I was grateful. So _pathetically_ grateful. She went to DC, but she was coming back, and we were texting and talking like it was…" He let out a ragged sigh. "And then she was leaving me again, she'd moved on, and I had to do something."

"It's okay," Shirley repeated.

"She would have talked me out of it, or you would have, or Frankie even, so I didn't give any of you a chance to…"

"It's okay."

"What am I going to do?" Jeff asked plaintively.

There was a moment of silence on the line. "Well," Shirley said slowly, "the first thing I would suggest is prayer, but you're you, so… have you thought about going back to therapy?"

* * *

Vicki wasn't home when Annie got in. She'd spent the car ride distracting herself from the conversation with Jeff by focusing instead on how she was going to pay for the Uber. The pittance the FBI paid her was only temporary, but it was all she had to live on for the next few years.

Instead of getting Jeff to buy her an expensive meal she'd spent money getting away from him, Annie mused as she flopped onto the couch and started playing a random romantic comedy on Netflix. She stared at it for some amount of time, exhausted and blank, until someone came in the apartment.

"Hey, have you seen Vicki?" Quendra asked. "Because she's late." She set down her purse and sat at the other end of the couch, by Annie's feet. "What are you watching?"

"Uh…" Annie realized she had no idea, not about the title of the movie or its plot or even who was in it. "Something with… that guy." She pointed feebly at the screen.

"Ethan Hawke?"

"Okay," Annie said listlessly.

Quendra stared at her a moment. "You seem tired."

"I saw Jeff," Annie groaned. She hadn't meant to tell anyone, but it just spilled out.

Quendra nodded. "I know, I know. Vicki told me this morning," she added. "I can't believe he's in your city — you totally had dibs!"

"I did, didn't I?" Annie blinked. "But I mean, I _saw him_ saw him. He saw me."

"Aw, honey," Quendra murmured sympathetically, and patted Annie's calf. "Was he with another girl? He's an asshole."

"No. He wanted to… he said he thought about me all the time and he wanted to buy me dinner."

"Bastard!" Quendra cried, then did a double take. "But you're here… it was the way he said it?" she guessed.

Annie sat up. "He acted like… I don't know. Like my not going back to Colorado was some kind of great betrayal. And, ugh. Look at this." She called up the two text messages he'd sent her on the drive back, then passed her phone to Quendra.

Quendra read the messages carefully. "Ugh. Talk about mixed messages."

"He's _the guy_ for mixed messages," Annie agreed. "I mean, you remember, that one time he tried to get —"

"I know, I know," Quendra said, cutting her off. The story of the time Jeff tried to stop Annie from bringing a guy she liked into their circle of friends by importing Quendra, AKA the time Jeff used Quendra to try to make Annie jealous, was one Annie and Quendra had told one another several times. It was, after all, one of the few things they had in common. "So he just vanishes, pfft, nothing but the note —"

Annie furrowed her brow. "Did I tell you about the note?"

"Vicki again," Quendra said with a shrug. "He leaves you that stupid I-love-you-but-I-can't note and then a month later you just stumble across him, and he's like, 'hey, let's make out'? I mean, give me a break!"

"Yeah," Annie said, swallowing. "It was really hard to say no, too."

"Did he say where he wanted to take you for dinner?"

Annie shook her head. "Someplace by Boston Common."

"Lot of good places over there. Seafood, cocktails… I bet that was hard, yeah."

"No, it wasn't that. I really miss him." She leaned back against the couch cushions. "And he says he misses me, so… maybe I should have listened to him. I wanted to hug him —"

"More than that, I bet," Quendra muttered.

Annie shrugged. "Maybe. But that's not… I can't do that. He jerked me around for so long, and he was going to marry someone else, and I tried to move on, and then…" She held her head in her hands. "He just has this power over me. I can't shake him from my system no matter how much I know better."

"You did, though!" Quendra said encouragingly. She patted Annie delicately on the shoulder. "You moved all the way here."

"The last time I saw him before that, he kissed me goodbye like he was going to kiss me again the next time he saw me. And then he was just gone, and… I miss him."

"Kissing you goodbye was probably just more of him jerking you around." Quendra shook her head dismissively. "Listen, I don't usually badmouth my friends' exes, because it can backfire on you when they get back together, but you and I aren't very good friends and also Jeb is a total douche, okay?"

Annie sniffed. "Yeah."

"Yeah is right. If he wants you back he's going to have to do more than just be like 'sorry, babe.' " She affected a deep voice. " 'I been real busy but I'm free tonight so let's do Netflix at your place. That's code for sex.' "

Annie laughed a little despite herself. "Your Jeb impression isn't very good."

"Seriously, though, you've got to take care of you," Quendra said. "No one else is going to."

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 2258:**

 **I can't believe you, you know that?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **You act like you were doing me a favor, blah blah I deserve better, and then you ask me out**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **The worst part is I really wanted to say yes**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**

 **I miss you. Jerk**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED]**


	11. If You Ask Me Nicely Enough

"And then Shirley got my number from Abed," Jeff was saying. He sat at his desk, with Mark leaning against his office doorframe. "And she tore me a new one, too."

"Ugh, that's rough, buddy," Mark clucked his tongue in sympathy. "Annie just shut you down."

"Yeah."

"You were, like, putting it all out there, and she was having none of it."

"Yeah."

"She took your heart and just _squeezed_ it." Mark made a gesture imitating a vise.

"Yeah. Thanks, Mark."

"Oh, so sad." He shook his head. "On the plus side, now you know how easy it is to get an Uber over in front of the state house."

Jeff glared at him.

"I'm trying to find a silver lining. Really reaching, I know… so what's your next move? Singing telegram at her workplace? Her office is just down the block, right? I know a guy who'll dress up in a stuffed animal costume and then strip it off. It sounds a little off, I know, but it's a whole cute strip-o-gram thing. He's very tasteful."

"Hmmph." Jeff managed a weak smile. "Not really my style."

"Fair enough, chief. Have you considered a cheese clock? It's like a flower clock — you send her one rose at one o'clock, two roses at two, and by midnight she has the full arrangement of seventy-eight roses, I'm sure you're familiar — but instead of roses, you send her gourmet cheeses." Mark beamed. "It's how I courted Eleanor."

Jeff stared at him a moment. "You know, I've missed you."

"Aw, I missed you too, buddy." Mark took a step towards Jeff's desk, in case Jeff was going to stand so they could hug. When Jeff didn't move he sat in one of Jeff's office chairs. "So if you're passing on my ideas, what do you have planned?"

"I don't know." Jeff rubbed the back of his neck and glanced up at the ceiling. "Maybe nothing. Maybe I should lie low for a while, avoid the Starbucks where she saw me…"

"Tango!" Mark sounded shocked. "You said she had your note — which means she found your note, not for nothing — she had it on her person. She walks around with it. You're _in_ , man! It's first and inches, you don't want to punt now!"

"I've got to face reality," Jeff said. "She's moved on. She moved on more than a year ago."

"Your note. Her pocket," Mark reminded him.

"She wasn't happy to see me," Jeff countered. "And she'd seen me around and not tried to talk to me. There's not some grand plan to us both being here — it's just a stupid coincidence."

"Oh, I hope that's not true." Stone strolled into Jeff's office. "Surely you're both here because you're skilled legal professionals."

"Get this, Will," Mark said before Jeff could stop him. "Jeff's ex that he moved here to avoid? She moved here too. She works like a block away, at the FBI office."

Jeff saw a flicker of… something… cross Stone's face before his usual neutral expression returned. Confusion? Fear? Whatever it was, it was gone in an eyeblink. "That sounds unlikely," Stone said coolly.

"World's full of unlikely things," Jeff replied.

"Speaking of unlikely things, I just got off the phone with the client at Via —" Stone began.

"Laser Lotus," Mark corrected him. "Come on, Will."

Stone smiled briefly. "Fine. I just got off a call with Laser Lotus, and they need to move up the meeting with Delaware co-counsel to tomorrow morning," he announced.

"What? Why?" asked Mark. "Tomorrow's Saturday."

"I'm not sure," Stone admitted. "The schedule we'd agreed to conflicts with some religious holiday or something." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. I told Andrea to cancel your other ticket," he told Jeff, "and get you on the Acela down there tonight. She'll email you your itinerary. The Laser Lotus people are already there."

Jeff let out a long breath.

"This a problem?" Stone asked, seeing Jeff hesitate. "I admit I probably should have checked with you before instructing Andrea. Do I need to go?" His tone made it clear he'd really rather not.

A weekend trip out of town might well be just what the doctor ordered. Jeff could spend a little time getting his head together before talking to Annie again. She'd probably appreciate a cooling-off period, he told himself. This wasn't him running from his problems. He knew exactly where his problems were. "Not at all, it's great," Jeff said, and meant it. "I'll run home, throw some socks in a bag, and get to the train station with bells on."

"Sorry to make you rush," Stone said as Jeff and Mark both rose. "Needs must when the devil drives."

"You know, I've never understood that expression," Mark mused. "There's three verbs and only one noun."

* * *

 **HIS NAME IS JOE to ANNIE, 1815:**

 **Hey, I didn't see you this morning or yesterday morning…**

 **Hope you're okay!**

 **Are we still on for tomorrow?**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1846:**

 **I'm sorry about yesterday**

 **I was hoping to see you this weekend just to talk about it**

 **But I've got to go out of town on business last-minute**

* * *

 **HIS NAME IS JOE to ANNIE, 1851:**

 **Maybe we could grab a bite before the concert?**

 **Or if you can't make it that's cool…**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1857:**

 **Right now I'm on a train to Delaware**

 **Life is just a never-ending cavalcade of excitement**

* * *

Annie stared at the text messages and sighed. They just kept coming. Joe Brown had probably asked himself when she was most likely to respond promptly to a text message and come up with the time she spent on the bus coming home from work. Jeff probably thought he only needed to remind her he existed, snap his fingers and she'd come running.

She started to type in a response to Joe, confirming the date and asking for time/place details, but she deleted it. Then she started a response claiming that she was sick and couldn't make it, and deleted that one, too.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 1908:**

 **What do you want from me?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Exhibit # 8 bazillion in the Jeff Sends Mixed Messages case: you wanted to see me but you're going to Delaware instead.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Jeez, I don't know what you should have done! I just know you're telling me that I'm not as important to you as whatever your trip is for.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Okay, you're right, I wouldn't blow off my job for you either, and you're low man on the totem pole at your new place the same way I'm new at mine.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **But it puts me in a real awkward position**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **And now I've got this coffee shop guy to get rid of**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

* * *

She stared at the last line. She'd written it without thinking, but it was true: she had no desire to see Joe Brown, no desires for him at all beyond getting rid of him. She'd put off making any kind of decision the whole bus ride home, which only reminded her of her Uber ride the night before. She sat on the sofa, looking at her phone, and not making any decisions, until Vicki came home.

"Hey, Annie!" she called out as she entered the apartment. "Just FYI, I did come home last night, it was just super late and you know I have to get up super early for the bakery! How's… ah." Vicki trailed off as she entered the living room and read the expression on Annie's face. "Quendra told me about your Jeff encounter."

"You were right and I was wrong, I guess," Annie said sadly.

"Well, I hate to say I told you so, but I did tell you so. Screw Jeff Winger, though, you know?"

"Heh. Yeah."

"You should come out with me and Todd," Vicki suggested. "Hit some bars, loud music, get him out of your system!"

"I don't know if — wait, Todd's in Boston, too?"

"What?"

"Todd from Greendale Todd?"

"Oh. No. There was a Todd? Todd's from Revere. And we're just friends and it's all on the up and up and if Neil asks you don't know a Todd and I've never mentioned him and I sleep here every night, okay? Can you do that for me?"

Annie squinted, nonplussed. She grunted something that might have been a yes or a no.

"Great!" Vicki said with a smile. "Seriously you should come, you shouldn't be sitting around moping."

She stammered. "I don't think I can afford —"

"Please." Vicki cut Annie off with a brief glare. "Like you'll be paying for any of your own drinks."

"Okay," Annie said, surrendering to the inevitable. When no one bought her any drinks she'd be able to justify begging off and going back home, and Vicki would be gratified she'd given it a shot.

"Awesome!" Vicki's grin suddenly vanished. "You're not wearing that, are you?"

Annie glanced down at her work clothes. "Why not?"

"At least change into a tank top," Vicki suggested.

"It's cold!" Annie protested.

"It's not cold in the bars!"

 _This is a make-friends-with-Vicki occasion_ , Annie reminded herself. "Fine. I'll change and we can head out."

* * *

In her room Annie weighed her phone in her hand.

* * *

 **ANNIE to HIS NAME IS JOE, 2003:**

 **[Sorry emoji] Stuff has been crazy — I don't think I can make it [Sorry emoji]**

* * *

The response came almost immediately.

* * *

 **HIS NAME IS JOE to ANNIE, 2004:**

 **That's ok!**

 **No problem — Good luck with craziness!**

* * *

Annie started to type a response — just a quick thank-you — but decided it would send the wrong message. It would have been one thing if Jeff weren't in town, or even if Jeff were here but Annie felt something — anything — for Joe Brown.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 2010:**

 **Maybe some time next week**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 2010:**

 **Delaware! Land of Mystery and Enchantment! How could I resent being pre-empted by a visit to Wilmington, the City of Lights?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **You really know how to make a girl feel valued**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

* * *

Then, impulsively:

* * *

 **ANNIE to HIS NAME IS JOE, 2011:**

 **Actually you know stuff has been crazy but it would be a good distraction**

 **I hope you haven't made other plans in the last ten minutes**

 **[Nervous face emoji] [blush emoji] [sorry emoji]**

* * *

 **HIS NAME IS JOE to ANNE, 2012:**

 **Not at all! [Thumbs-up emoji]**

* * *

 _Maybe I'll like him more if I get to know him a little better,_ Annie thought. _It's not like another year of not dating Jeff Winger is going to make anything better for anybody._

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 2014:**

 **Are you ready?**

 **PS I am NOT cheating on Neil with Todd and you can tell Neil I said that if he ever asks**

 **I mean don't bring it up obviously but if he asks you should tell him I told you I am not cheating on him**

 **and as far as you know that's the truth**

* * *

"I'm coming!" she called. Vicki was only in the next room. She threw on a tank top and ventured forth into the night for what turned out to be an evening of not being able to hear what people were saying, politely declining mens' attempts to get her drunk or possibly roofie her, and trying not to watch Vicki make out with her platonic friend.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 0017:**

 **Is this what normal people do? This sucks.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

* * *

 _Well, well, well, Harvey Keitel._

Jeff stood at the window in his hotel room and stared out over the rooftop across the street at the singularly unimpressive skyline of Wilmington, Delaware, corporate litigation capital of the world. He imagined, not for the first time, what Annie might have said if she were there.

 _It's super cool and mature of you to run away like this,_ Imaginary Annie said.

"I'm not running away. This is for work. I have a meeting in the morning." Jeff loosened his tie and debated whether he'd rather have a drink in the hotel bar or just go to bed.

 _Sure. You didn't jump at the chance to get out of range of the ol' Disney Eyes._ Imaginary Annie hopped onto a tabletop, her legs swinging. She stuck her tongue out at him.

Jeff ignored her and busied himself taking off his shoes. "Maybe I'll call room service and have a bottle of scotch sent up," he mused.

 _Yeah, that's a great move. You can bill the client for it!_ Imaginary Annie said. _That was sarcasm. Also I'm in Boston and I'm not going to tell you to stop drinking, so if your big plan is to drink too much to get me to pay attention to you, which I bet it is because your alcohol consumption dropped by ninety percent as soon as I went off to DC, drinking here and now is not a good way to do it._

"You know, as time goes on you sound less and less like Annie and more and more like my thinly-veiled self-loathing," Jeff told her as he hung his suit jacket up. The pants went over a chair back, while his shirt, t-shirt, and socks were dirty laundry.

 _Oh, Jeff, come on! Yes, I'm a projection of your imagination, but don't you think you know the real Annie well enough for me to be a good facsimile? I have all of Annie's traits. I'm hot, but not little-girl hot, and I'm incredibly clever and fun and you miss me when I'm not around. I love you like a slightly estranged older brother, and I'm mad at you right now for running away and then being pushy, but mostly I tolerate your misguided attraction to me. It's only fair, I figure, since I was hung up on you for so long. Plus I kind of like the way we both know that I have you completely wrapped around my little finger._

"Mark pointed out to me, this morning, that you apparently keep my letter on your person," Jeff said slowly.

Imaginary Annie shrugged. _Not a big deal. Maybe I hold on to it because I really do care about you. We have a lot of history, and just because I've moved on doesn't mean I don't care. Or maybe I just happened to have it on me through coincidence, like I was wearing that jacket when I found it and I stuck it in a pocket and forgot about it._

"And you called me your best friend."

 _Well, duh,_ Imaginary Annie said with a toss of her hair. _We texted like every day, all summer._

"Some of those texts were pretty…" Jeff trailed off, not needing to say 'flirty.'

 _Best friend was hyperbole — I was upset — but obviously you're one of my closest friends. I can have close friends I don't make out with. I never kissed Abed or Britta once. I mean,_ Imaginary Annie clarified, _**I've** kissed Imaginary Britta and then some, but that doesn't count and you have a very dirty mind._

Jeff smirked at his own imagination's wit.

 _But seriously, you can be my best friend without me wanting to kiss you except as a favor to you,_ Imaginary Annie said.

"You also complained about me getting engaged to Britta, on the day we met Borchert." Jeff frowned, remembering. "I think that's what you were complaining about."

 _Yeah, that's a big mystery. Why would I complain about that? You were only hooking up again with the woman you'd been sleeping with to distract yourself from me._

"That's not… okay, that's kind of true. But only kind of." Jeff threw himself backwards onto the bed and spread his arms wide.

 _And we both know Britta deserves better than to be used like that. Unlike me, she doesn't have the self-respect to deal with you and all your weird issues. I'm spunky as fuck and I can handle you — up to a point — that's one of the things you love about me. But Britta? She is not a woman you should be in a relationship with, or even sleeping with. You know that._

"It was a crazy time!" Jeff pulled a pillow over his head, to hide the tears in his eyes. "You know, I was only three days out of the hospital!"

 _Ugh, don't remind me._ Jeff imagined Annie giving a whole-body shudder. _Nothing less attractive than a gross old man in a hospital bed._

"Real Annie wouldn't say that," Jeff said.

 _No, of course not. But she would think it. Or she thought it. Probably that's why I cooled off on you right after that. Sick old man, on top of hooking up with Britta… It's clear why I looked at you and said, no thank you, time for Annie Edison to move on._ Imaginary Annie hopped down from her seat and cuddled up next to him on the hotel mattress. _It sucks that you waited until then to decide you were in love with me_ , she whispered wistfully in his ear. _But it's your fault, not mine. You can't say I didn't give you every chance. The sooner you move on, the better, and I'm saying that as your friend._

"I think I liked it better when you were insulting me," Jeff murmured.

 _You're one of my closest friends and I do care about you, even if I don't want to be your actual girlfriend. I let you kiss me goodbye, remember? I thought it would make you feel better._

"I definitely liked it better when you were insulting me."

 _If you ask me nicely enough I might decide that I should sleep with you to make you feel better._

The thought struck him like a blow to the chest; his entire body spasmed.

 _Like you could turn me down… aw._ In Jeff's imagination Annie sighed sadly, then kissed him lightly on the cheek; he could almost feel her breath. _I'm sorry. These aren't things I would ever want to risk hurting you by saying out loud, because I love you. And as long as you don't break down and beg me for sex I'm sure it'll never come up. You're just feeling especially low right now. And you know you've got me worried about you. I love you like an uncle, but I love you._

"I love you too," Jeff murmured.

 _Oh, believe me, I know._


	12. Jeff's Annie

Monday morning Annie was at Beans 'n Things as it opened, about an hour and a half before her usual time. She flinched, despite herself, at the sight of Joe Brown's usual table empty, and felt like she'd upset the balance of the universe somehow.

"Triple short americano?" Jeanne the barista asked her.

Annie nodded and paid.

"You're in early," Jeanne observed as she made Annie's drink. "You beat your fella in."

"He's not my fella," Annie said quickly. "We went on one date. He's not anything. I mean — okay, that's kind of a rude way to put it…"

"No, no, I get it," Jeanne said. "If I see him, I'll tell him you never want to see him again." Seeing Annie's shocked face, she added "I'm kidding. I don't really care. Although he was a good tipper."

"What time does he usually get here?" Annie asked, checking the time on her phone.

"Usually? Hour, hour and fifteen minutes from now. Haven't seen either of you since last week, though. I thought maybe you'd decided to do your daily flirting someplace else."

Annie frowned. "He didn't come in Thursday or Friday, either?" He'd said he had, hadn't he, when he was texting? Maybe she'd misunderstood.

"No…" Jeanne handed Annie her coffee. "Are you worried he's cheating on you, making small talk with some other girl in some other coffee shop?"

"I told you, he's not… ugh." Annie sagged against the counter as Jeanne began filling the order of the other customers who came in after Annie. "He was flirty and he asked me out and I said yes and I shouldn't have but he seemed nice and low-key and the concert was soooo boring I spent the whole time thinking about how maybe it would have been fun if I'd been there with…" She paused for breath, and decided against finishing that thought. "So I'm coming in earlier, going to get to work earlier, going to be a go-getter, and also going to not see him again."

"Man, I'm terrible at feigning interest, I guess," Jeanne mused. "Because you seem to have decided that I care."

"That would make you good at feigning interest," Annie said weakly. She hoped they were engaged in friendly banter. Jeanne was hard to read, and it was early.

"It depends on what my goal is," Jeanne countered. "I could have told you he was a loser," she added, "I mean, come on, he was hanging out in a coffee shop looking to pick you up."

"I don't think that was why he —"

"He'd come in fifteen minutes before you got here, stick a twenty in the tip jar, and wait for you. Then once your bus was around the corner he'd leave. I guess he gave me the twenty so I wouldn't say anything," Jeanne said, "but he hasn't bribed me lately. And it's fun to, you know, stir the pot."

Annie strained to reconcile Jeanne's statements with the blandly cute and friendly guy who'd taken her to an awkward Natalie Is Freezing concert. "Huh," she said.

"If I see him again I'll tell him the jig is up," Jeanne continued blithely. "Unless you want to bribe me to say something else?" She sent a hopeful glance Annie's way.

Annie shook her head. Something seemed off, but then, she'd been off-balance ever since she spotted Jeff buying a latte the week before. "I couldn't afford it, and even if I could, I don't think it'd be worth it."

Jeanne made a face. "Well, see, now you have got me really mildly curious about your life, which sucks for me because I hate asking follow-up questions. You ask one, and then there's another, and another, and it's like, where do you stop? I have so many better things to do than ask follow-up questions. It's insane, the number of better things I have to do."

"Uh huh." Annie sipped her coffee.

"But okay, you twist my arm, ugh. So the guy was a drip and the concert was a bust?" Jeanne seemed to recognize each of the people who came in for coffee as they chatted, or at least she seemed to have a preternatural sense of what they would order. She barely had to glance at them, allowing her to focus her full attention on Annie.

Annie watched Jeanne work. "Um. Yeah. It wasn't his fault, he was just weird and nervous and I didn't know it until the concert started but I really don't like Natalie Is Freezing. A couple of my friends did, back in Colorado, and they played my school once but I wasn't really paying attention… I thought I'd give them a try. And Joe Brown is not somebody I want to see again. We didn't really click, like, conversationally, you know? Long pauses."

Jeanne said nothing for a bit. Just when Annie's sense of the mood of their interaction had shifted from _kind of awkward_ to _super awkward and weird_ , she said "Like that?"

"Yes!" Annie nodded, slightly relieved that the tension had ratcheted back down to _pretty darn awkward_. "He was anxious the whole time but he didn't seem to actually be any more into the date than I was. He kept running off and reappearing. We got burritos before the concert. I paid for mine myself. Afterwards we'd kind of planned to get drinks or something but instead he said he needed to get home to do some work, which saved me the trouble of coming up with something… So, you know, no hard feelings?"

"Man, this is why I don't ask people questions," Jeanne whined. "The answers are always sooo boring! I've completely forgotten why I thought I wanted to know about your stupid date. Maybe I had a microstroke. You can have a free mini-muffin if you leave right now."

* * *

At exactly 12:15, just as she was sitting down to lunch at her desk, Annie's phone rang. It took her a moment to identify the sound; no one had given her a reason to use her phone as a _phone_ in weeks, not counting Jeff that one time.

It was an unknown number — Annie's first thought was that Jeff must have changed his phone again, then caved and was calling her from the new number, which was crazy. Probably it had nothing to do with anything.

"Hello?"

"Hello, can I speak to Annie Edison, please?"

"This is she," Annie said carefully. The voice was slightly familiar but she couldn't place it.

"Oh, excellent. My name is William Stone, I'm an attorney. We actually met once before —"

"I remember." Annie knew him now: the rangy lawyer who'd run the polygraph session with Pierce's will. "What's this about?"

"I'm calling because of an element of Pierce Hawthorne's bequest. Can you come in to my office? It would be much easier to explain in person."

Annie smiled. "Unless your office is in Boston that's impossible. I've relocated."

"Yes, I know," Stone said, surprising her. "I'm with Biddle Heath, near the courthouse downtown."

Annie emitted a surprised gasp.

"I can give you the exact address if you like —"

"That's okay, I'll just google it," Annie said. "Um. I actually work right near the courthouse. I could come over right now — my lunch doesn't end until one — or at six? Or tomorrow?"

"Six o'clock this evening would be great," Stone said coolly. "I'll tell the receptionist to expect you."

"Great…"

"I'll see you then."

Annie set her phone down carefully and tried to guess what else Pierce might have wanted from her, or to give her. He'd left his fortune to Troy, except for a handful of odds and ends, including the diamond tiara he'd given her. Maybe he'd only meant for her to have the tiara for a limited time, she mused. It was in a safety deposit box back in Colorado, which had seemed easiest.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 1218:**

 **Weird thing just happened, got a call from Pierce's lawyer out of the blue**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **If only I had a lawyer of my own to advise me!**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **I wouldn't be able to pay him, of course, but perhaps we could work out some alternate arrangement…**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **I meant a contingency basis!**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Gross, Jeff! Get your mind out of the gutter**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

* * *

Annie might have texted more, but the phone rang a second time. Assuming Stone had forgotten something, she answered it.

"Hello, Annie?" The breathless voice on the other end definitely wasn't Stone.

"Hello?" she asked, cautiously.

"Ha! Excellent. I need to see you. It's a matter of life and death, chaos and order, Betty and Veronica!"

Annie was silent for a moment. _Could it be Joe Brown?_ "I'm sorry, who is this?"

"Oh! Ha, ha. Ha." The man didn't so much laugh as say the word 'ha' a few times. "This is Russell Borchert. I love computers?"

Of all the things Annie had been expecting, this was not one of them. "Doctor Borchert?" she asked, incredulous.

"Yes! Exactly! I have a PhD, so good of you to remember! I don't normally like to use the phone — I mean, anyone could be listening in. The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968, hello? Ha! But this is important. I need to clamp you, for Scarlett."

Annie waited a moment for him to elaborate, then prompted him. "Go on."

"Now I know you're in town, so it should be a simple matter to hop over here so we can hook you up…"

"Dr. Borchert —"

"Call me Russ!"

"Okay. Russ, I need a lot more information. Where are you? What do you want to do, exactly?" _Can we do this without me being alone with you?_

"Ha, ha, ha," Borchert chanted. "I was in a bunker, you know. Yes. Of course. Those are reasonable questions. Ha. You may recall when I was in the bunker I was working on my beloved Raquel, who heroically sacrificed herself so that we could all escape together…"

"Okay," Annie said, because it seemed easiest.

"But now I've built Scarlett and she needs data and of course you're uniquely qualified to assist with the calibration. Have you ever seen _Blade Runner_? It's a movie."

"Yes…"

"Wasn't it great?"

"Sure."

"I mean, Harrison Ford, I knew he was a talent, but he did so much…"

"Absolutely."

"Where was I? Scarlett. Calibration. I just need to put some electrodes on you — totally non-invasive, outside your clothes, don't worry — and ask you some questions, then compare them to the first data set and it'll only take a few minutes. The questions, I mean. It's like the Voight-Kampff Test in _Blade Runner_."

Annie had no recollection of the Voight-Kampff Test. _Blade Runner_ was one of those sci-fi movies Abed watched; to her they'd all blended together. "Of course," she said.

"So you can do it? Great! Just come over whenever. I'll tell someone to expect you."

On the one hand, Annie liked to think of herself as a good and generous person, and Borchert sounded so eager… on the other hand, he was a weird creepy man with a creepy nipple fixation whose creepy magic door had almost locked her into a version of hell… "Where, exactly?"

"Any time between, oh, nine in the morning and nine at night should be fine. I'm usually here."

"Where?" Annie repeated, with what she thought was admirable patience.

"Oh! The Trapezoid Building. It's at MIT. Very easy to find — it's the one shaped like a trapezoid, you can't miss it. I'm in the top floor. Now the sooner we get this done the better, can you come in this afternoon? This evening? I can stay late if you can't make it until after nine."

"I…" Annie considered. She was pretty sure Vicki owed her a favor. She'd talk to her that night, get Vicki to accompany her into the bowels of MIT and visit the crazy man. The sad crazy man who needed her. "Okay. I can do tomorrow evening I think. Eight thirty?" Wrangling Vicki would be easier later in the day…

"Great! Even better! That will give me plenty of time to set up! I'll see you then!"

It wasn't until he'd hung up that it occurred to Annie to wonder how Borchert knew she was in Boston.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 1224:**

 **Things just took a turn for the wacky**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Totally serious: I'd love to talk to you about this.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Actually I'd love for you to go there with me.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **I feel like I owe it to him? But I also worry he's deranged.**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **I could use a neurotic strongman to protect me**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Of course you'd probably just disclaim all responsibility and flee**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

* * *

Jeff collapsed into a chair in his hotel room and swore. Somehow an overnight trip to Wilmington, Delaware (corporate litigation capital of the world and all-around boringest city on Earth) had stretched into what was now its third day. Meetings followed meetings followed breaks to review documents followed more meetings. The amount of paperwork required for a multimillion-dollar shareholder suit had, in spite of Jeff's best hopes, turned out to be staggering. According to the specialists Stone had hired, they needed to file multiple briefs, letters, and memoranda with the court, all of which had different requirements. Any formatting error on a submission and the clerk of the court would shred it unread.

It was all the parts of being a lawyer that Jeff hated, compressed into a single weekend that was never going to end. He kept getting pulled into one more meeting, having his train ticket back to Boston cancelled and a new, later one issued, only to be similarly pushed back later in the day.

Keeping him down here like this was costing Via Laser Lotus an arm and a leg, between the billable time and the expenses, but Stone was adamant that the client wanted a Biddle Heath rep sitting in on all the planning meetings, and that the planning meetings had to be in-person, rather than over the phone like in a sane world. In theory Jeff's role as Via Laser Lotus's attorney was to liaise between the specialists and the client, and use his extensive background knowledge of Via Laser Lotus's operations to prevent the specialists from creating any conflicts. However Stone was the only one the client actually spoke to (religious reasons, again, Stone claimed in an email) and Jeff knew less about Laser Lotus than he did about _Inspector Spacetime_.

All the time he spent in Delaware was billable, which was great for his hours but ridiculously inefficient. Pulling all the facts together, Jeff couldn't help coming to a single, inescapable, insane conclusion: Pierce was alive and screwing with him.

It was, he conceded to himself, just barely possible that Pierce was dead but had drawn up a set of trustee instructions that foresaw his relocation to Boston. Pierce might be screwing with him from beyond the grave. Couldn't rule that out.

He glanced at his watch. Six o'clock. He had twenty minutes to get downstairs and across the street to another meal with the specialists. In a perfect world, he reflected, he'd spend that time texting with Annie. But his was an imperfect world…

* * *

 **JEFF to ABED, 1804:**

 **You got a second?**

* * *

Minutes ticked by. Jeff lounged as casually as he could in the hotel room's one easy chair, and played a round of Fruit Ninja, until…

* * *

 **ABED to JEFF, 1807:**

 **Sure**

* * *

 **JEFF to ABED, 1808:**

 **I'm stuck in Delaware**

 **Probably because Pierce thought it would be funny**

* * *

 **ABED to JEFF, 1808:**

 **Did you see Pierce again? Is he a ghost?**

* * *

 **JEFF to ABED, 1809:**

 **[Ghost emoji]**

 **What are you doing?**

* * *

 **ABED to JEFF, 1810:**

 **That's not a no**

 **I'm editing a scene for the movie**

 **I should get back to it**

* * *

 **JEFF to ABED, 1812:**

 **Movie? [Question mark emoji]**

* * *

When Abed didn't immediately respond, Jeff resisted the urge to text him again. _You're just checking in with a friend_ , he told himself. _Stakes could not be lower._

Still, he loitered in his room longer than he should have, waiting.

* * *

 **ABED to JEFF, 1822:**

 **You can see it when it's done**

 **If you wanted daily updates you should have pledged to the Kickstarter**

* * *

 **JEFF to ABED, 1823:**

 **Well have fun**

 **I've got to wine and dine a pack of wealthy former English majors.**

* * *

 **ABED to JEFF, 1825:**

 **[Cool emoji]**

 **[Cool-cool-cool emoji]**

 **Did I tell you I got custom emojis for my birthday?**

* * *

A sense of foreboding filled Annie as she approached the Biddle Heath offices. Though they were located in the same kind of nondescript Brutalist hulk as the FBI office — nondescript Brutalist hulks dominated the city center — the mood of the place felt different. As she stepped through the doors a strong scent of artificial vanilla struck her, cloying and sticking to her clothes. The source of the perfume, she saw, was a large candle burning in the middle of an ugly fountain, installed right in the middle of the lobby.

"Sign in, please," called a voice from the far end of the large room. Annie glanced that direction and saw a counter, both long and wide, with a single woman seated behind it. She wore a security uniform and had a blandly pleasant expression fixed on her face. The guard tapped a clipboard on the counter in front of her.

Annie frowned at her own disquiet. She was an adult, fully capable, a college graduate even. There was no reason to be _frightened_ of an office lobby, even if she did have a sense that she was about to be ambushed. She strode as confidently as she could manage up to the counter, and entered her name (Annie Edison) and whom she was visiting (she started to write William Stone, but changed it to Biddle Heath when she saw that half of the other guest entries in the log were simply BH) and the time (five after six). She finished with a flourish, and smiled at the security guard.

The guard's expression hadn't altered an iota. "Reception's up on twelve," she said, and pointed to a bank of elevators on one wall of the big empty lobby.

"Thank you," Annie said with all the gravity the occasion deserved.

A short elevator ride later, she stepped out into another, smaller lobby. The receptionist, who might have graduated from high school the same year as Annie, smiled another professional smile at her. "Can I help you?"

"I'm here to see William Stone," Annie told her, ignoring the sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Something about this place was messing with her. Get over it, she instructed herself. It's just an office.

"Oh, Annie Edison?" the receptionist asked brightly. "He's expecting you. If you'll just —"

"Annie Edison?!"

The sound of breaking crockery and someone crying her name with an interrobang diverted Annie's attention away from whatever instructions the receptionist had for her. She spun, finding the source of both sounds standing in a doorway: a small frog-faced man standing over a puddle of coffee and a shattered mug.

Annie reflexively took a step back. "I don't —"

The man started towards her, eyes wide. "Oh my God, I can't — what are you doing here? Why — does he know — what?" he sputtered. "Oh, jeez, mind the spill. Sheila, can we get a —?"

"Yes, of course," the receptionist said, in the placating tone of someone who has cleaned up (or arranged for someone else to clean up) coffee spills many, many times.

"What's the occasion?" The weird man let out a sort of yelp and cried "Jeff's in Delaware!" much louder than was necessary, and in an instant Annie realized something she probably should have guessed already.

"Jeff works here," she said slowly. "At Pierce's law firm." The sense of unease that had been growing since she entered the building suddenly broke over her. Of course Jeff worked there. On some level, she'd realized that before she'd even gone inside. She was in Jeff territory — not enemy territory, exactly, but not somewhere she could let her guard down.

"Pierce? Who?" The soft-skinned man reared back. "I mean, yes, Jeff works here — did you not — he said he and you — my name is Mark, I'm Jeff's best friend, it's amazing to meet you!"

Annie's perspective shifted, as she found a model to use for interacting with Mark: she was talking to a weird East Coast version of the dean. She could handle a weird East Coast version of the dean. "You're Mark… Cash?" she said, accepting his proffered handshake. "Although that's probably not your real name, is it?"

"It's fine, Tango calls me Cash, I call him Tango, it's just this thing we do." Mark glowed with pride and held onto her hand for a fraction of a second longer than Annie was entirely comfortable with. "I'm sorry, I'm just nattering on… can I get you a cup of coffee?" He gestured towards the hallway. "Espresso? Sorbet? Biscotti?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Annie said as Mark led her down the hall. "I'm supposed to be meeting with William Stone…"

"Sure, sure, sure." Mark half-turned as he walked. "I've got to say, it's amazing to finally meet you. We've heard so much — Eleanor and I — and here you are in the flesh!"

"Here I am," Annie agreed. "Um, what have you heard, exactly?"

"Oh, you know." Mark chuckled. "You're the greatest woman on earth, he never loved before and never will again, you're too perfect for this fallen world. Standard guy stuff."

Annie frowned. "Uh huh."

"Seriously, he's got it bad for you — you know that, I'm sure, you know how he is. Don't need me to tell you, get enough drinks in him and he refuses to talk about anything else."

Annie scoffed. "That doesn't really sound like Jeff…"

"Well," Mark admitted, "he does require some prodding, that's true. I said to him, Tango, you need to…"

Annie nodded absently. To hear Mark tell it, Jeff had improvised multiple blank-verse soliloquies on how he was her devoted slave, which didn't much match the man who'd fled Colorado rather than have a conversation with her. How many times had she tried to get Jeff to just _talk_ with her? Each time he'd evaded or dissembled. Eventually she'd reached a breaking point, and that had been the end of the story, until —

Eventually she'd reached a breaking point, and that was the end of the story.

Except that was wishful thinking, obviously, because he was still constantly at the forefront of her thoughts. And she knew why he'd done what he did; she didn't need anyone to explain it to her. Jeff couldn't handle loving her, he assumed she would leave him and break his heart, and so he'd fled. It was the same strategy she'd seen from him so many times before: make a decision about Annie without consulting her, refuse to talk to her about it, deny that there'd even been a decision to make. Her whole long torrid history with Jeff Winger was the story of a man jerking a woman around…

But then, Vicki and Quendra had thought she and Jeff were dating, or had been dating a few years ago, sophomore, junior, senior year. She'd seen how unhappy he became, as she'd pulled away from him last fall. His heart-wants-what-it-wants speech aside, there'd been an electricity between them, that last week they'd spent together. And now a man she'd never met before was claiming Jeff had spent the last month, at least, pining for her.

Mark was still talking. "…First and inches, I told him, because it's blindingly obvious that if half of his stories are true than you're… oh." Mark stopped short and broke off his monologue as Stone abruptly appeared in an office doorway, silent and grim. "Will, this is Annie! Jeff's Annie!" Mark exulted.

Annie let out an involuntary little squeak. She cringed at her own embarrassing sound, hoping neither Mark nor Stone had noticed it. What had Jeff actually told Mark, that he would call her 'Jeff's Annie' so freely?

"Of course. Ms. Edison, so good to see you again." Stone spoke like a funeral director. He also wore a severe dark suit like a funeral director, some irreverent part of Annie observed. "If you'll join me in my office?"

Mark stood like a man who needed to use the restroom, shifting his weight from one leg to another. His face bore a pained expression. "I know it's… would either of you mind if I sat in on this? I'd love to be read into whatever —"

Stone raised a hand. "Sorry, Mark, not this time." He gave Annie a chilly look. "Please, come in."

At this point, Annie decided, there wasn't anything more that could shock her. She was fully shocked out. Done with the being shocked. Just 100% done. No more shocks left in her. She nodded solemnly to Stone, and stepped into his darkened office.

As Stone followed her in and closed the door, leaving Mark still out in the hallway, Annie discovered that she did, in fact, have one more shock left in her.

"Hello, Annie," said Pierce.


	13. Too Busy Moping

"I didn't like that one. Let me try it again. Three, two… Hello, Annie."

Pierce sat behind a sumptuous rosewood desk, in front of a wide case full of expensive, lawyery-looking books. His eyes were sharp behind his glasses, and the suit he wore was surprisingly well-cut and fashionable. He had a smirk on his face Annie recognized — Pierce's _I know better than any of you idiots_ look. "I'd ask how you've been, but, well, you know."

The camera zoomed out slightly, showing the edge of a windowframe over Pierce's left shoulder, beyond which a snow-covered landscape gradually became visible.

"If you're viewing this, well, it means several things. First, I'm dead. I'd like to assume I died heroically, fending off a band of freelance terrorists as they tried to hold an entire elementary school hostage, or wrestling a rabid panda, but of course I can't see the future. I might have died more prosaically — crushed under the press of bodies at an orgy in Palo Alto, or of a sudden heart attack triggered by the news that aliens were real and had blown up Euro Disney as a show of their beneficence. Maybe I died of disease, or maybe Jeff murdered me out of jealousy. My point is, I'm gone."

Annie turned to Stone, standing behind her. "What is this?"

"Well, he…" Stone sighed, and gestured weakly back towards the screen on his desk.

Pierce hadn't waited for questions. "When my father died I found out he'd left me a complex eight-player video game that I had to conquer to earn his love and my inheritance. You remember that; you were there. I didn't agree with my father about a lot of things. He was a bitter and cruel man, his prejudices were shortsighted and he didn't even like Moose Tracks ice cream. But the idea of leaving my fortune to various heirs through the mechanism of a complex game? That I liked."

Annie turned again towards Stone. "How did you —"

"At my bequest, probably several weeks ago now, you and your friends were told that I'd left almost my entire fortune, fourteen million dollars, to Troy. Not completely true." Pierce tented his fingers. "Troy needs a kick in the pants to get out of his rut. Fourteen million is a lot of money, but it's not the bulk of my family fortune. No, the bulk of my family fortune goes to you."

"What kind of lies did —?" Annie spun and shot Stone a dirty look before turning quickly back to the screen.

"You've made something of yourself already. I worried that just dumping riches in your lap would mess up your life plan, so I told my lawyers to watch you and wait. As soon as you'd used the seed capital from selling the tiara I left you to make something of yourself — as soon as you had shaken off the dust of Greendale Community College, as soon as you'd rid yourself of them, they were to find you and play you this recording. 'Them' being Aybed and Britta and Shirley and Winger. 'They' being my lawyers." He made a sour face. "You're watching the recording, I assume, so that must have worked out. I don't know exactly what your current situation is, but I expect it's one that would be improved by the infusion of fifty million dollars. If you don't want it you can give it to charity, or pay for therapy for Winger so he can admit to being gay, or you can buy a whole lot of puppies with it, I don't know. It's money. Everybody needs money."

Pierce leaned forward in his chair. "Confidentially, I've always thought there was something up between the two of you — you and Winger, I mean. I'm sure no one else has noticed it. You probably haven't noticed yourselves. But life is short. Give it some due consideration."

"Yes, Pierce, everyone else noticed it, too. Even Jeff," Annie told the screen. "Eventually and half-heartedly, but he did."

Pierce failed to respond, instead silently staring ahead as though she hadn't spoken.

Stone cleared his throat. "It's a recording," he said. "I assumed that was obvious."

Annie rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know it's a recording, I was just —"

"That should be enough time for the revelatory wisdom about your personal life, that I just dropped, to sink in," Pierce announced. "I wanted to put that in before I forgot about it, it doesn't have anything to do with the treasure hunt. Oh?" Pierce's eyes widened theatrically. "The treasure hunt, you ask? The treasure hunt, did I just say twice now? Three times? Yes. Treasure hunt. I didn't want to copy Dad by making another video game, so I'm doing him one better and putting the secrets out… in the world." Pierce gestured grandly. "I've hidden clues throughout the world, leading only the cleverest, uh, Annie… I thought about making it a race between you and Aybed but then I thought maybe Aybed would win and I don't want Aybed to inherit, I want you to inherit. Don't get me wrong, I like Aybed, and I think you're a safe bet, with your crafty Jew brain… sorry, your crafty Jew-ish brain…" Pierce shook his head. "Never mind. My point is there's a bunch of clues and you follow the clues to the treasure. It's pretty straightforward. I have my lawyers all lined up to ensure it goes smoothly. Now, the first clue will play immediately after this video ends. Good-bye, Annie. You were always my favorite. Kick Jeff's ass!" Pierce pumped his fist, then added "He'll probably enjoy it."

Pierce winked at her — at the camera. "Iris out, three, two, cut to the graphic…" He stood up from the chair. "I think we'll use that take," he told someone offscreen. "I liked that one. But just for safety, let's do one where —"

The screen suddenly went blank.

"And that's it," Stone said from behind Annie. The VCR remote control was in his hand. He flipped the lights of his office back on, and crossed the room to his desk.

While Stone adjusted the monitors on his desk back to their usual configuration, Annie stood there and tried to make sense of what she'd just seen. "What…?"

"Despite what Pierce says in that recording, there is no first clue," Stone told her apologetically. "He intended there to be, but never got around to making it. Or any of the other clues he would have scattered."

"What?"

"He got as far as buying a couple of books of cryptic crosswords, I know that much. But…" Stone made an _oh well what are you gonna do_ sort of gesture. "He wanted to edit that video himself, too, but, well, you can see how far he got with it."

"So… wait." Annie slid into a seat. "There's not a treasure hunt?"

"Oh, there's a treasure hunt all right." Stone chuckled. "There's definitely a treasure hunt. Find the treasure and you inherit Pierce's fortune. There just aren't any clues."

Annie folded her arms. "What, exactly, do you mean?"

Stone ticked items off on his fingers. "Find the treasure, inherit the fortune…. No clues… Use your crafty Jewish brain, I guess?" He chuckled again, a little more nervously. "That's all I have for you."

She stared at him.

"You can see why I needed you to come in and see it in person," Stone said.

* * *

The elevator doors had only begun to open when Jeff slid out between them and swept across his office's lobby. "Good morning, Jeff!" Sheila called as he rushed past her towards Stone's office. "Back from Wilmington?"

He ignored her, not because he had anything against Sheila, but Jeff was focused on other things. The whole train ride up Jeff had been turning it all over and over in his head, and he needed to unload on Stone quickly, before he lost any of his momentum.

Pierce jerking him around like this — whether from beyond the grave or from a secret bunker in New Zealand with Elvis and Michele Miscavige and Lord Lucan — was unacceptable. Stone participating and aiding him was beyond the pale. Literally everything Jeff had done over three days and four nights in Delaware could have been accomplished with email and telephone calls, and not very many of them. The more Jeff thought about it, the more certain he was that the whole Via Laser Lotus case was a smokescreen. The name was a dead giveaway. He'd been played with enough; Jeff Winger had had enough! The night before, after an evening of swapping Dungeons & Dragons stories with his co-counsel (he'd been unsurprised to learn that these most nerdy of lawyers were all D&D enthusiasts), Jeff had made an executive decision. He'd taken the first train north the next morning, and arrived in Boston before lunch.

It wasn't far from reception to Stone's office, but before Jeff could close that short distance Mark appeared in his path. "Jeff!" he cried, his face a mix of excitement and concern. "You're back? I thought you weren't getting back until tonight —"

"No time to explain, buddy," Jeff said, as he tried and failed to sidestep Mark in the hall. "I need to talk to Will ASAP."

"Okay, great, but there's like three things you should know first —"

"Whatever it is, it can wait until —"

"It's about Annie!"

Jeff stopped trying to bull rush past his friend. "What?" A litany of possible disasters flashed through his mind — Annie hit by a car or shot foiling a mugging. Annie eloping with a stranger would be… well, not as bad as her death, by any means, but… Dread chilled Jeff; had he missed his final chance with her? "Is she okay?" he whispered urgently, tugging at Mark's lapel.

Mark tilted his head towards his office.

Jeff nodded. There were a half-dozen more people — lawyers, paralegals, and office assistants — in earshot than were needed for this conversation.

Once in his office, Mark closed the door. "First off, she's fine. As far as I know, at least. And she accepted my friend requests on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, so, I'd know. I met her yesterday."

"You met her?" Jeff felt his face redden. "What did you —"

"I didn't do anything! She came here! She came here to meet with Will." Mark pointed in the general direction of Stone's office. "He called her in, wouldn't say why. I met her out at reception, or I wouldn't have even known. I hope I'm not out of line saying she's almost as gorgeous as you led me to believe, by the way…"

"Will called her?" Jeff scowled. It had to be Pierce. Pierce was alive, Stone was Pierce's agent, Pierce had gotten him out of town while Stone pulled whatever weird trick Pierce had put him up to...

Mark nodded. "I don't know what about, he's under strict confidentiality orders to keep it separate from the rest of the firm, apparently. And after she wouldn't say, either, although she was pretty upset, I know that much…"

Jeff felt ill. Pierce had pulled some kind of sick law-related shenanigan on Annie, messing with her from beyond the maybe-grave, in Jeff's own office, and Jeff had been out of town. And Annie hadn't contacted him about it, the way they left things… "I'll call her," he said aloud.

"Tango, you know I love ya and I'm on your side, here," Mark said. "I think you should call her." He blinked. "I mean, yes, good. Good! You do that —"

"Right after I talk to Will Stone."

"About the Laser Lotus deposition schedule?" Mark asked, referring to a small storm of emails that had been sent among the various Laser Lotus attorneys that morning. "That's not as important as —"

"No, no, nothing to do with… it's Pierce Hawthorne," Jeff declared, figuring he could trust Mark if he could trust anyone. "I'm sure of it. Pierce set this whole thing up to mess with me. I told you about his Laser Lotus Buddha church thing."

Mark nodded. "You did, yeah. Okay. You want me in there with you?"

Jeff actually had to think about it for a second, which on some level surprised him — he'd forgotten what it was like having Mark watching his back. "Nah," he said. "Will's more likely to open up to just me than to both of us."

"Well, I'll walk you over."

Mark followed Jeff out of his office and down the hall the short distance to Stone's office. The door was ajar, but the lights inside were off.

"Damn it," muttered Jeff.

"Hey Andrea!" Mark called down the hall. "Have you seen Will today?"

* * *

The morning had gone by in a blur. Annie struggled to focus on her work, but Pierce's bizarre message from beyond the grave was understandably distracting. Once upon a time Annie Edison had dealt with stress through compartmentalizing: when she was working she was working, when she was fretting she was fretting, and she allowed herself a five-minute panic break every hour of studying. But all that seemed a lifetime ago, now.

She'd texted Jeff a dozen times about it, getting no response, of course, since she was sending them to his old number. She considered texting him at his new number, so he would actually read the messages, but then what would his response be? Which Jeff would respond?

* * *

 **JEFF (BUT NOT REALLY) to ANNIE, i:**

 **Sorry no can do**

 **I'm too busy moping about how I'm aging to help you**

 **Nothing matters and I'm drunk at nine in the morning**

* * *

 **JEFF (BUT NOT REALLY) to ANNIE, i:**

 **I'll help you with this on the condition that you sleep with me**

 **Because I am literally fourteen years old**

 **PS Britta is having my baby**

* * *

 **JEFF (BUT NOT REALLY) to ANNIE, i:**

 **I'd love to help you! You're very important to me!**

 **Unfortunately I have to move to South Dakota, goodbye forever!**

 **[Heart emoji] [hug emoji] [kiss emoji]**

* * *

She tried hard to focus on her work, because whenever she let herself get distracted from the task in front of her, one of the various crises at the edge of her life began to intrude. At lunchtime she decided that ignoring the crises was just letting the crises win, so she did what she always did in crisis mode: she made a list.

LIST OF CRISES

1\. Jeff is in town and being weirdly hot-and-cold

2\. Pierce left me tens of millions of dollars but I have to solve a puzzle to get it; puzzle is literally insoluble because Pierce never wrote it

3\. Vicki is cheating on Neil and making me complicit

4\. Joe Brown was apparently some kind of stalker

The order of the crises was carefully selected. If nothing else was going on, Jeanne's weird story about Joe Brown would have been driving her to distraction. Vicki's personal life trumped that, because Vicki had access to where Annie slept. Sitting Vicki down and explaining to her Pierce's bizarre bequest would, Annie was confident, have convinced her roommate to table any and all plans to connive Annie into helping her hide her infidelity. But she couldn't handle any of that right now, because of stupid Jeff Winger.

She needed an action plan. She needed first of all to deal with Jeff. Then she'd know how to approach Pierce's thing, which would tell her what to do with Vicki, and by the time she got that low on the list of priorities she'd have all the confidence she needed to cast aside her Joe Brown-related concerns like so much dust in the wind.

Dealing with Jeff meant tricking him into meeting her somewhere she could control — someplace she could grill him without him fleeing, someplace he couldn't weasel out of. She had a brief vision of him in an FBI interrogation room, cuffed to a table while she patiently asked him to go over his story just one more time… Unrealistic. Probably unnecessary. He'd wanted to date her, after all.

He _had_ wanted to date her, hadn't he? She mulled it over, recalling what he'd said and what he hadn't, what he'd apparently told Mark. Mark his confidant who seemed to think the two of them were star-crossed lovers (Annie and Jeff, not Annie and Mark. Or Jeff and Mark, for that matter). And how they left things… for once the ball was in her court. All she needed to do was call him and she'd be in control. She'd tell him to meet her, someplace she knew and he didn't — the coffee shop, maybe. She'd give him one chance, no more, to win her over…

As she sat there, eating yogurt and reflecting on what hoops, exactly, she would make him jump through… her phone chirped.

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1218**

 **INCOMING CALL**

 **SLIDE TO ACCEPT**

* * *

 _Dammit dammit dammit._ Let it go to voicemail. Show him that she wouldn't just leap up when he snapped his fingers… "Hello?"

"Annie." He sounded relieved.

"Jeff," she said cautiously. She felt her heart rate increase.

"I'm back from Wilmington and I'd like to meet you at your earliest convenience. Shit. That sounded…" He sighed. "Just… whenever you're up for it, I'd really like to sit down and talk. Wherever you want."

Annie almost dropped the phone. "There's, um. There's a coffee shop by my apartment. It's in Somerville."

"I don't know where that is." Apologetic, that's how he sounded now. "Can you give me the address? When do you want to meet? You don't have to say right —"

"Tonight," she interjected. "I'll text you the address. It's open until nine, so… Seven?"

"Absolutely!" he said quickly. "Seven. It's a date. I mean —"

"Yeah —"

"Right, I didn't —"

"Sure, sure —"

"So I'll see you then?!" Jeff's voice twisted upwards.

"Yes?!" Annie's voice, to be fair, was doing the same thing.

"Bye then?!"

"Loveyoubye!" _Dammit dammit dammit._ Annie hung up quickly before she embarrassed herself further.


	14. A Less Creepy Version of That

_You know that's how I end calls with my grandmother, right? Don't read too much into that._

"It's not something she said before…"

 _Which just goes to show you how much her view of you has changed._ Imaginary Annie pursed her imaginary lips in a sad, sympathetic imaginary smile. _You're like a sexless robot butler._

Jeff scowled. "You're reading a lot into a little. That's obviously not how she meant that."

 _Oh? You think she meant that she wants to marry you and get a house together and build a life and she's a stay-at-home mom and you work at Greendale and you get to kiss her whenever you want and you have a son named Sebastian? Now who's reading a lot into a little?_

As soon as he was off the phone with Annie, Jeff began to worry. He hadn't expected her to suggest that evening — tomorrow, or the next day, or the coming weekend. She'd been upset when he'd seen her last. Maybe she'd come around — maybe she wanted to see him, actively wanted it. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

 _Wishful thinking is about the worst thing you can be doing right now. You need to face reality. You need to bear down, okay? It's midterms, Winger, and this is sudden death overtime. The jury's clearly on the fence. You need to get the eight ball into the pocket. Sink the putt._

That afternoon, in between calls, he ran through talking-to-Annie drills.

 _Okay, we're at a coffee shop. I'm there when you get in, sitting with the latte I've already ordered_ , he imagined Annie suggesting. _Go_.

"I smile and approach you. I shake your hand… no, I just give a little wave, you're seated and I need to get coffee or something before I can sit down. I walk over, say hi, give the little wave, then I buy a cup of coffee."

 _What kind? It's a coffee shop — you can get espresso ristretto, a macchiato, chai, some kind of mocha bullshit, decaf…_

"Decaf," he mused, glad his office had a door that closed so he could sit at his desk and talk to himself without fear of ridicule. "It'll be evening, after all."

 _Decaf is for old people,_ Imaginary Annie asserted. _You want her to start off thinking about how old you are?_ The Annie of his mind's eye clucked her tongue in a way he'd never seen Real Annie do, but which felt appropriate.

"Chai latte, then." A solid choice, he felt — au courant and trendy.

 _Unless it's passé,_ warned Imaginary Annie. _Maybe a chai latte would make you look like a desperate old man trying to cling to his faded youth._

So something timeless, conservative but not archaic. A soy latte. Plus a soy latte was familiar; it'd put him on an even keel.

 _All right. Soy latte. You order it, then what? Sit down immediately or stand at the counter and wait for it?_

Jeff frowned. He didn't know the layout of the place, or where Annie would be sitting.

 _We'll have to come up with another plan if she isn't there when you arrive. Which is likely — there's a solid chance she's going to stand you up, another solid chance she'll be late because this is so much more important to you than to her. Still, let's try to get through this scenario before we move on._

Sitting immediately after ordering made the most sense, Jeff decided. Otherwise he might seem like he was malingering, or he didn't want to see her.

 _Great. You've successfully entered the coffee shop, ordered, and sat down. Now we're staring at each other,_ Imaginary Annie said. She pantomimed sipping from a cup she held close to her face with both hands, elbows on a table. _Say something!_

"Hi," Jeff said. He felt stupid. "How have you been?"

 _Ugh._ Imaginary Annie scowled at him. _Your small talk sucks. That's why you used to pretend to be texting someone all the time. Come on!_

"Maybe we skip the small talk."

 _You want to just jump right in to the heavy stuff, not make any attempt to put me at ease? Are you serious?_

"Okay, yeah." Jeff thought back to their previous meeting. "Christ, I don't know anything about her life here. She works for the FBI at their office downtown. It's a really low-level job, I remember that from when she first told me about it." He glanced at the map of Somerville he'd called up on his phone. "She lives someplace fairly near the bus line."

 _Start with that,_ Imaginary Annie instructed him. What's her living situation? Does she have a roommate? Just don't be creepy when you ask, like you're hinting she should move in with you. _That would be weird and crazy and bad._

"Well, obviously," grumbled Jeff. "I'm not going to say anything that stupid."

 _We both know you're going to put your foot in your mouth somehow. It's just a question of how._ Imaginary Annie sighed. _Look, I care about you. I don't want you miserable. I'm nice enough to let you be part of my life, provided you don't get creepy or scare me off._

"I know."

 _And by 'part of my life' I don't mean a lover or a boyfriend, I just mean a friend. Someone who can help me move. Someone who will feed my cat when I'm out of town, if I ever get a cat. Someone who'll sit on the bride's side of the hall at my wedding to New Jeff, summer after next —_

Jeff winced. He'd forgotten about New Jeff.

 _New Jeff is still on the table,_ she warned. _You're going in blind. So small talk introductory topics: the nature of her work. Her living situation. How she's adapting to the East Coast in general, Boston stuff. Maybe have an anecdote ready to go — 'hey, remember that time you pretended to be my wife and I couldn't even pretend to be angry, I just wanted to reassure you that I'd never cheat on you?' No, bad choice. 'Hey, remember that time we did Model UN and you still couldn't legally drink and I was really struggling with how into you I was?' Better, not great._ Imaginary Annie held up a finger and beamed. _'Hey, remember that time you helped City College steal the Greendale Community College space simulator? The Eleven Herbs & Space Experience?' That's a good one — no subtext to the anecdote at all._

He nodded wearily.

 _Although I did sort of lie to the group and collude with City College,_ Imaginary Annie mused. _But mostly you think of it as a time you really noticed Troy and Britta making eyes at each other, and Pierce was being nutty. So good enough. If I bring up the betrayal thing, you can sidestep it. And then we'll move on to the heavy stuff — you apologizing to me,_ she continued. _Lay it on me._

"Annie," Jeff said. "I'm so sorry that…"

 _Come on, chop chop._

"I'm sorry I left Greendale without talking to you. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But we can't just run from our problems; I see that now —"

 _So I'm a problem? I'm a problem you ran from? Or are you saying that I ran from you, when I left you for the FBI? Or earlier, when I stopped treating you like you were more important to me than Britta or Abed?_

"I…"

 _Start again,_ Imaginary Annie ordered. _She gave him a sad look. I'm saying this because I love you. I want to forgive you, remember._

"I'm sorry I left without talking to you. I knew you'd talk me out of it, and I didn't think I could bear being your friend any longer…"

 _Really? Couldn't bear being my friend. Really._

"Instead of lover!"

 _Lover?_

"Okay, a less creepy version of that."

 _Jeff, we've gone over this. I love you and I want to forgive you, but I don't want you as a lover. You're my friend._

"Christ. This was a bad idea."

 _This rehearsal, or meeting her at all?_

"Both. I'm severely overthinking this." He closed his eyes. "I'll be honest," Jeff decided. "Honest and unrehearsed."

 _Makes sense._ Imaginary Annie nodded. _That's the usual advice for approaching juries, after all. Don't rehearse. Oh wait no it's the opposite of that —_

"Worst case scenario I'm in the same place I was last week — out of her life, with no clear route back into it."

* * *

Britta was a half-hour or so into a paper-writing jag when her phone rang. She glanced at the display, then did a double take before picking it up and answering. "Annie? Hello?"

"Hi, how are you?" Annie's plastered-on smile was almost visible through the phone.

"I'm okay… what's up?" Britta glanced at her watch. Four thirty Mountain time; dinnertime on the East Coast, but still kind of early for Annie to be calling.

"Do you have a minute?" She sounded anxious, but this was Annie; she sounded anxious most of the time.

Britta looked down at the three-quarters-written psych paper in her lap. "Sure, I could use a break." She cleared her throat. "Listen, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Jeff being in Boston. I was going to! I mean, he didn't tell me not to, I don't think —" she didn't really remember. "And even if he did, girl solidarity, right?"

"It's okay. I should have called you sooner, I wanted to talk to you about Jeff, actually."

Britta grimaced. This wasn't a topic they'd ever really tackled. "Uh."

"We've never… have we ever really talked about it? I mean, kind of the last time I was in Greendale, but not really, you know?"

"Have you been talking to him? Does he know you're there? I swear I didn't tell him —"

"I know, I know," Annie said quickly. "I talked to him a little last week, and we're meeting tonight. In about a half an hour."

"Oh, wow." Britta crossed her legs, the half-completed paper sliding to the floor. "So, uh, what can I do for you? You need dirt on him? You're probably the only person who knows him better than I do."

"That's just it! I don't know him. I thought I did, and maybe once I did, but now? It's like there's a bunch of different Jeff Wingers and I don't know which one is real. If any of them are. Ever since he turned forty, I guess."

"Hmm. So…?"

"Tell me about him. Tell me about him like I don't know him. Or, no. Tell me about him like I haven't seen him since senior year. Like I'm the hiring manager for a prestigious white-shoe law firm in New York and he listed you as a character reference."

"So I should lie?"

"What? No! Just… who is he now?" Annie asked frantically. "Frankie said the other day that when I look at him I'm seeing him the way he used to be, and she knows him now —"

"Maybe Frankie would be a better person to ask?"

"You know him, though. Please?"

"Okay." Britta took a deep breath. "When you last saw Jeff, he was… what, he had graduated, given a heartwarming speech like he used to do, and then he went off to be a hero lawyer."

"Yes!"

"He kind of stopped returning calls or responding to texts, like, right away. He said he was too busy with his law practice getting started to hang out. I think he texted you a little more than me…"

"Probably, yeah. He didn't like to talk about his work, and he'd get all distant."

"Right. So, then Abed called me and we met back at Greendale, and Jeff was there, and you were too. He was tired and angry in way he hadn't been, but he was really glad to see you."

"To see everybody."

"Yeah, no. He was still doing the chair thing. He'd sit at his spot next to me, but his whole body would be pointed away from me, right at you."

"I remember how he used to sit," Annie said slowly, "but that was just because he was kind of in a corner and he wanted to be facing everybody."

"Nope. The way he sat when you were there, he had to turn his head whenever he looked at me or Troy or Abed. And he sat normal if you weren't there."

"Hm."

"And, I mean, I thought you and he were… on the same page? Like, you were lava joust buddies. And you took his class and made him actually teach…"

"I didn't make him. I convinced him that he was better than the version of himself he was presenting to his students…"

"He didn't do it for his students," Britta said firmly. "He did it for you. He'd do anything for you."

"I don't that's… okay. Taking that as read, how did you feel about it? Honestly."

"Honestly? It pissed me off. The whole time Jeff and I were sleeping together —"

Annie interrupted with a gasp. "You and Jeff were sleeping together the whole time?!"

"What? No! I mean, you remember." Britta closed her eyes and shook her head. "Uh, sophomore year. The whole time we were doing that, he made it clear that he might have been sleeping with me, but when it came to doing stuff together, he preferred you. He _hated_ that one guy —"

"Rich."

"Yeah! He hated Rich, he hated that you were into Rich, and I don't know what happened with that. That was when the sex got really bad."

"What?"

"I mean, it was no great shakes to begin with, to be honest, but towards the end he just… it was clear he'd rather be doing something else besides having sex with me. It wasn't real hard to break it off, when we did, because of that. I mean, I knew you had a crush on him, and I guess that made him seem… you know all this. Do we have to rehash it?"

"No, no, we don't. We got off track — we were talking about after he started teaching."

"Yeah." Britta swallowed. "He was pretty clearly into you, if you were worried you'd imagined that."

"I know," Annie said quietly. "Were you okay with that?"

"I didn't have any right to be upset — first I was with Troy, and then we parted amicably, and Jeff had moved on… except that he hadn't because he'd been stuck on you the whole time. I was kind of bitter about it then, I guess, but we're talking years ago. By the time you're talking about, after he started teaching? Mostly I thought he was a jerk for jerking you around. And that you were stupid for letting him."

"Uh huh."

"But I guess it worked for you, and I didn't think I was in any position to say anything, so I didn't talk to him or you about it. I talked to Shirley about it, once. Right after Troy left she and I went out to dinner and we got all weepy about Troy being gone… or I did. Shirley said she thought Jeff and I were cute together, and I said Jeff's big problem with me was that I wasn't you, and she said that you were too good for Jeff, and I said what does that say about me, and… we were kind of drunk." Britta paused, remembering. "And then Jeff turned forty."

"Yeah."

"You were there, so… he scared the crap out of all of us. And he was like five years older than I thought he was." Britta tried to think of an answer to Annie's question. "I remember thinking that it had to be really hard on you, because of what you went through with Adderall."

"It was kind of the worst thing," Annie agreed quietly. "I thought of him as always being so strong, nothing could get past his defenses. When I found him on the floor… it was… it was awful."

Britta murmured agreement. "Yeah. I guess I thought, 'oh, he's actually forty, not thirty-five, that's why he and Annie aren't together.' Or I didn't think that, it just kind of went into the back of my head and I didn't question it. As if five years is a big difference, I mean, ten years versus fifteen, what's that matter?"

Annie made a neutral _hmm_ sound. "Well, then you agreed to marry him."

"I didn't… yes. We were talking, and it was like, me and Jeff were the two people who'd been through it all together. The whole group, yeah, but you and Abed were younger, Troy was already gone, Shirley was older —"

"Shirley is actually the same age as Jeff."

"Okay. Yes. She seems older, though, you know? Don't tell her I said that. In the moment, me and Jeff were — it was like, we'd been through all the Greendale stuff, and what were we getting out of it, and we were in the same boat, too old to spring back easily from it all, and Jeff said we should get married because it was what people did when stuff happened."

Annie didn't say anything.

"I've actually been thinking about it, since we talked about it before, when you left," Britta continued doggedly. "I'm sure that if you had been in the room he would have… I don't know what, exactly, if he would have proposed to you in the same singularly unromantic fashion that he proposed to me, but whatever he did, it would have been with you, and I would have watched."

"You think?"

"And I kind of wish — I really wish that would have been what happened, because maybe that would have been the shove you two needed to move forward."

"Maybe we all would have been trapped in that stupid bunker for days or weeks."

"Yeah, well, small price to pay for you guys not going so badly off the rails, okay?" Britta retorted. "I mean, look what it did to him. And maybe it would have worked out the same. Jeff put on a magic helmet and thought about how much he loved Greendale, or played with himself, or whatever, and the doors opened up."

"Yes, fine." Annie felt indescribably weary, and they'd only just then finally gotten to the important part. "After that I took a step back from Jeff. Different kind of moving forward."

"I kind of figured you two talked about it," Britta said. "There was this whole different energy between you all of a sudden, like, he was sad and drunk and you were looking at everything in the room that wasn't him. Did you really never talk about it?"

"After a year," Annie said, a little irritably. "But I didn't think anyone else noticed that I wasn't — that I wasn't reaching out to Jeff. I wasn't sure he noticed."

"He noticed. He never talked to me about it, but he'd look at you, sometimes, when you weren't looking at him, and I could see it. He didn't say anything to me about it. I guess he was embarrassed about the whole stupid engagement thing. Which, you know, I forgot about that as soon as we were out of the bunker. But I thought, and I guess he thought too, that you'd moved on."

"I had," Annie said. "I had moved on. Then the day I found out about the internship he — we talked, a little bit, and then it was like all of that never happened, all summer it was like it used to be, texting and stuff, and then I got the job and he was gone."

"He really changed over the summer," Britta recalled. "Pulled himself together, some. Jeff stopped drinking so much, just — _bzzzt!_ — no more. Not _no_ more. But way less." She thought a moment. "Not during the day, on school days. And he started working on his classes again — you said you got him to do that, which I figured, that meant you were buddies again.

"I was glad. You both seemed happier when you were doing stuff together. I was also kind of jealous, okay? Not of Jeff — he's not the guy for me, we both deserve better. But… jealous of you. I mean, uh… you made him want to be this version of Jeff that was good enough for you. I never got him, or any man, to do that."

"Troy…" Annie began, and trailed off.

"I guess, but I was always the other woman in that relationship, too… ugh. I don't know. Jeff is, well, he's not the guy for me, I know that much."

They were both quiet, for a little while, and Britta wondered if she'd been cut off.

Annie broke the silence just as Britta was about to start going _hello?_ "So, um, I'm about to go meet him for coffee."

"Like, a date?"

"No. I don't know. Maybe. No. I changed clothes for it."

"Good luck," said Britta. "I mean, really. I want you to be happy. I don't know if he's the guy for you or not, but I want you both to be happy and you need to work some stuff out together. Good luck, okay?"

"Thanks, Britta. That means a lot." Annie made a little cheery sigh sound into the phone. "Girls?"

"Can I confess something to you? I don't really get the 'girls' thing," Britta said.

"Yeah, me neither," Annie admitted. "It sounds better when Shirley does it. But, you know I really do appreciate your support."


	15. Mi--

Annie's coffee shop was smaller than Jeff had expected, with tightly-packed tables and chairs all of dark wood. He looked around, taking in as much as he could without betraying his discomfort. No Annie — that was the first thing he noted. Just a coffee shop. The man behind the counter, a guy with thinning hair who brought to mind the word 'portly,' greeted him with a nod. A woman in the corner farthest from the door glanced up from her laptop as he came in, then quickly went back to it. Otherwise the place was empty.

He ordered a soy latte, paid, and sat watching the door. He'd gotten there fifteen minutes early, erring on the side of caution when it came to accounting for traffic.

After five minutes of drumming his fingers and wondering whether he was just going to sit there, alone, until the coffee shop closed at nine, it occurred to Jeff that he still had _Fruit Ninja_ on his phone. He dug it out of his jacket pocket and started playing; Annie came in twenty seconds later.

God, she looked good. He tried and failed to resist the urge to stare. Sharp suit, string of pearls — had she changed clothes, or was this what she wore to work every day? New Jeff was a lucky man, either way. Her hair hung down, swinging as she walked in a way he found hypnotic.

She smiled as she approached his table, and he realized how he must look — eyes wide, drinking in the sight of her like a camel preparing to cross the desert. He blinked, and straightened up.

"Hi," he said, returning her smile.

"Hey." Annie sat down across from him, maintaining eye contact. Was she aware what her posture did to her… chest… when she sat like that? She knew what effect she had on him, surely, the spark in her eyes gave that away. What had happened to her, in the months since they'd spent time together in Colorado? How had she become diamond-hard and white hot?

"So, Jeff," she began, her voice rich, "what's —"

"Excuse me!" The barista (Was barista gendered? Was the guy a baristo?) cleared his throat. "Did you want to order something?"

Jeff saw her flinch, and in an instant the illusion was broken, and she was the Annie he knew again; the Annie he desired and loved. No less appealing, just because he could see she wasn't as invulnerable as she'd seemed at first.

Annie swallowed, and gave Jeff a tight smile and a _one second_ hand signal, before rising and ordering a decaf.

"It's really good to see you," Jeff said as she sat down once more. "I, uh, I want to apologize, first off, for how I acted the other day."

"The other day?" she repeated quizzically. "Do you mean when you invited me to a steak and/or lobster dinner?"

"Well, judging by your reaction it was the wrong move at the time," he replied. "You'll note I didn't compound the mistake by trying to pay for your drink."

She laughed, awkwardly, endearingly. "You're always willing to go the extra mile, when the extra mile involves not doing something."

"Well…" Jeff smiled sheepishly. "For you, I'm even willing to do a thing."

"Sometimes." Annie looked at him and he could see the gears turning.

His smile faded. Quickly, before Annie could rain her truth-bombs down on him, he asked, "Do you remember the Eleven Herbs & Space Experience?"

"What?"

"The space simulator. It was stolen, Abed was locked out, Pierce was acting crazy… fun times. Fun times," he repeated slowly. "Fun times."

Annie said nothing. She looked down in the direction of Jeff's coffee cup, her lips pressed tightly together. "Okay," she finally said, as though conceding a point. "We can both be dishonest. Or… what are you getting at?"

"I drove past a KFC this morning," he lied. "It reminded me of the space Winnebago. It was fun times, is all."

"The time I betrayed Greendale," Annie said flatly. She folded her arms.

Fortunately Jeff had run drills for this eventuality. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking about that part," he assured her. "I was thinking about the rest of it. The hilarious-in-retrospect memories. That you and I share."

"Okay." Annie's expression softened, although she didn't unfold her arms. "We've got a lot of those."

"Yeah," he agreed eagerly. "Absolutely."

She nodded, and the memories hung between them like a curtain.

"Last time we talked, properly talked, was back in the middle of August," Jeff said. "You'd just been offered the permanent job in, uh, Boston it turns out…"

Annie nodded again, almost imperceptibly.

"So what's happened since then?" he asked, before she could say one of the many thousands of possible responses that would have led to a screaming fight. "You moved. Or you have a frankly ridiculous commute, splitting your time between Greendale and, uh, Boston."

"I moved, yeah." She eyed him warily. "It's been kind of messed up. I'm living with Vicki."

"Vicki from Greendale Vicki?" Jeff asked, surprised.

Annie nodded. "We used the web portal alumni housing roommate thing. I thought she was someone named Tory and she thought I was Annie Kim."

Jeff chuckled. "So you're looking for a new place, I assume?" He faltered, hoping he hadn't stepped over a line by implying that she ought to be living with him.

She didn't seem to notice. "Actually, no. Vicki is at least as easy to live with as Abed ever was. She cleans the bathroom herself! _She_ complains if _I_ leave dirty dishes out!"

"You never leave dirty dishes out, though." He smiled at her. "Or have you been doing it just to test her limits?"

"Well," Annie said with a cute shrug, "I need to have full information on what is and isn't acceptable if I'm going to live with her." She smiled back at him, and for a few seconds they were just sitting and catching up together and everything was good and normal. Then she seemed to remember their circumstances, and the warmth faded.

Jeff sensed her shifting mood. "So how did Vicki end up all the way out here?"

"Is this what we're going to do?" she asked, ignoring his question. "Just chat like a couple of old friends who bumped into each other?"

"I don't…" It was Jeff's turn to stare down at the tabletop. He bit his lip. The small talk portion of the evening was over. Still, he'd practiced this. Ever since he'd left Greendale he'd known, on some level, that this conversation was inevitable. "I let you go…" he began.

Annie took a ragged breath. "If what you're saying is," she began, her voice almost catching, "you don't want to see me, then we probably shouldn't be meeting like this."

"Hah!" Jeff shook his head and ignored the guilt he felt for making her voice crack like that. "You know there's nothing I want more."

"Do I?" She closed her eyes for a moment, then glared at him. "You left me."

"I did, yeah." He didn't want to meet her gaze, instead playing with a coffee stirrer and the foam in his latte.

"You moved across the country with no forwarding address," Annie said. "You closed out all your social media, you changed your phone number — you threw your whole life away, just so you wouldn't have to talk to me! How was that supposed to make me feel?"

"I wanted you to be able to move on without worrying about me."

"So you got really worrisome?" She tilted her head and studied him. "You don't really think you're so toxic that the nicest thing you can do for someone is leave them alone, do you?"

"Of course not. I just… I panicked. I felt like there was this slim window where I could get away, before it became a story about you going off to conquer the world and me decaying back at Greendale. I thought it would save us both a lot of pain in the long run. Save me a lot of pain, I guess."

"Save you a lot of pain," Annie repeated. "You really hurt me."

Jeff winced, but said nothing. What was there to say, besides that he was sorry? Hurting her was the last thing he'd wanted to do, but when he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that he'd known his sudden departure would cause Annie some discomfort. He hadn't expected her to just brush it off, but she was young and she'd moved on; he'd thought it was a blow she could endure and recover from with ease. She'd said she'd regret the kiss for a week and then forget about it, after all.

Annie scooted her chair back a bit and leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. "I was really looking forward to seeing you. Telling you all about the job offer, and my plans, and hearing what you thought… and you took that from me, and then you left a note saying it was for my own good."

Jeff managed a weak smile. "Well, that's your favorite, right, when someone makes decisions about you without consulting you?"

She didn't take the bait. "Are you going to go away again? Suddenly decide this is a bad situation and you need to escape? I don't want to get all excited by your —" Her face reddened slightly. "I mean, I don't want to get invested in you and then you pull up and move to South Dakota."

"Yeah, that's not going to happen. What is there in South Dakota? Chimney Rock?"

"Mount Rushmore," Annie replied. "Chimney Rock is in Nebraska."

"It doesn't surprise me at all that you know that off the top of your head. Brilliant as you are beautiful."

"Hm?" Annie blinked in surprise. "Beautiful?"

Jeff nodded, nonplussed at her reaction. "Brilliant, kind, wise, dedicated, and also the most beautiful woman I've ever met."

She smiled and looked down and bobbed her head in a manner Jeff found indescribably endearing. Then she looked him in the eye, drawing herself up, and a little bit of that aura of invulnerability she'd walked in with returned; the shift made her no less alluring. "I was really looking forward to seeing you again, and you left. You hurt me —"

"And I'm sorry." He held up his hands, whether in surrender or rebuke he wasn't sure. "I don't know how to make that right, but I'd really like to be part of your life again."

 _You sound like my estranged father,_ Imaginary Annie suddenly whispered in his ear.

He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "In whatever capacity you're willing to have me," he added. "You're incredibly important to me and I've spent the entire time since… I was going to say since I left Colorado but it goes back before that. I've missed you a lot. I've thought about you a lot."

"Mark kind of implied that," she said. "I met Mark, did you know that?"

Jeff nodded. "And in case you needed independent verification, he said you were almost as gorgeous as I'd been claiming you were."

She gave a little half-smile. "Yeah, he seems to think you're just nuts about me."

"I don't know where he'd…" Jeff cleared his throat and tried again. "Yeah."

"I missed you, too, you know." Annie paused, staring at him. "This whole time has been so crazy… I keep thinking 'oh, there's something to tell Jeff,' or 'I wonder what Jeff will say about this,' and then I remember. Every time I got an email or a text or a call or something in the mail, I hoped it was from you. Every time! You'd think I would have learned by now. And now you're a block from my apartment, telling me you're being honest."

"I am being honest!"

"Not just that, you're being… eager. Forthcoming! Where has this Jeff Winger been all these years, with your… friendliness?" Annie looked like that last word was a bad compromise from what she wanted to say.

"Lying to you, lying to myself," Jeff said with a readiness that surprised him. This part of the conversation felt comfortably familiar — he'd had it many times before, with Imaginary Annie.

"And now you're being honest," Annie said. She looked at him; judged him. Some pressure valve inside her seemed to have been released, and she slouched a little in her chair, the ice in her eyes replaced by warmth. "And now I have to ask myself, is this the least likely thing that's happened to me since I moved here? Because it's been… zany."

"The last month has been weird for me, too," Jeff began, thinking of Russell Borchert in his MIT lair, and the Via Laser Lotus case. And his inability to even try to flirt with that one researcher…

"Oh, I'm sure. Wilmington, Delaware, intrigue capital of the Eastern Seaboard, right?" Annie asked wryly.

He saw the spark in her eyes and it made him hungry for more of her. "I did hear a number of hilarious stories about Dungeons & Dragons games," he said, "but I was thinking of _why_ I had to go to Delaware, actually." Jeff almost said _Pierce is alive_ but held it on his tongue; that was a big revelation to lay on her, and he wasn't 100% certain it was true, not yet. "And some other things," Jeff added, since she seemed to be expecting him to say something more.

"Whatever it is," she said, "I can top it —" She broke off as her phone buzzed, and took it out of a jacket pocket. "Crap," she said, reading it. "I forgot — I'm supposed to be meeting Vicki, to, uh…" She looked up at him and he felt himself tense slightly, recognizing the expression on her face.

She was going to ask him for something. He was going to do it, of course. This was the first step on what would no doubt be a long and rocky path to convincing her that she really could rely on him. Just helping her, being there for her however she wanted him, wouldn't be enough by itself, though. They both knew he was wrapped around Annie's little finger; hours spent debating the imaginary version of Annie that lived in his head had convinced him of that. Although, he thought with sudden disquiet, Real Annie seemed to have spent a lot more time thinking about and missing him than Imaginary Annie had led him to believe. It was possible that Imaginary Annie was wrong about other things, too. Real Annie's affection for him seemed purer than Imaginary Annie's affectionate contempt. She seemed both harder and more fragile, in different ways…

"Yeah?" He tried to hide his mounting excitement.

"You want to come with me? To meet Vicki at my apartment?" she asked, which was simultaneously the most welcome invitation Jeff had ever received in his life, and a bit of a letdown.

* * *

When Jeff didn't answer immediately, Annie began to worry she hadn't sounded casual enough. He stared at her, his expression oddly intent. Or what would have passed for oddly intent six months ago; the piercing way he looked at her seemed to be his new normal, judging from this conversation. "Of course. What's the situation?"

"I have to go do a thing. I forgot about it when I said we could meet now… it takes like an hour to get there, walking to the subway station…" Annie shook her head and tried not to be flustered. Or at least not to show it. "And I asked Vicki to come along. You know, safety in numbers…"

He looked like he wanted to ask a bunch of questions, but instead just nodded. "Can I give you two a ride over to wherever?" he offered.

"Oh! Um." She stalled, briefly at a loss for words. A month of relying on public transportation for everything made car ownership seem like a superpower. "You don't have to — actually, yeah, that'd be great." Annie rose, abandoning her decaf mostly undrunk, before he could take the offer back. "If you don't mind? It's just over in Cambridge."

"Not at all!" Jeff assured her. He dashed around the table to hold the door to the coffee shop for her. "Mi—" He coughed, then in a slightly strangled tone said "My pleasure."

Annie decided to ignore her sudden premonition of Jeff deciding to kick her and Vicki out of his car halfway to MIT, and Vicki lambasting her over relying on Jeff Winger for even two seconds. "Thanks," she said instead.

He smiled like she'd given him a present.

Out on the sidewalk Annie began leading Jeff down the block and around the corner to her apartment, when she abruptly realized that during the exit from the building, somehow without noticing she'd taken Jeff's arm and wrapped her own arm around it, like they were… what, Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart? She slid away from him, certain she'd gone red as a beet.

Jeff didn't say anything about it, although he let out a disappointed little hum, possibly without meaning to, and that was very nearly enough to get her to grab him again, or throw herself into his arms.

 _No,_ she told herself. _Bad plan._ She wasn't about to throw herself at him, literally or metaphorically, not after all the times he'd shot her down or denied her or fled the state rather than talk to her. _He had your cell number and your email this whole time. He could have checked in with you at any point, and he decided he didn't want to._ She wasn't going to let him hurt her like that again, no matter how much energy she felt crackling between them. Energy that may very well have been all in her head. Jeff was a flirt; it was what he did. Probably it was the only way he knew how to express even platonic affection towards a woman. He'd complimented her a thousand other ways in the past; him saying she was 'beautiful' was no more significant than all the times he'd called her clever or kind. Usually right before asking for a copy of her notes, or for her to do his part of a group project.

Annie cleared her throat and tried to think about other things. "You'll never guess who I got a call from yesterday," she said. "Russell Borchert. That's who we're going to see. He's at MIT now, apparently. I don't know how he knew I was here, but he wanted me to go to his lab and let him test me, or something, with his computer. You remember the computer? Raquel?"

To her disappointment, Jeff seemed unsurprised. "Scarlett," he said, hands thrust deep in his pockets as he watched his feet. "Raquel's replacement. His new computer is named Scarlett. I met him last week, actually. MIT is kind of a maze but I know where his lab is, now — I could show you, if you want?" Jeff sounded less like he was making a friendly offer and more like he was asking her to do him a favor. Again, it was hard to not just throw her arms around him because God, both of them could really use a hug.

"Absolutely," she replied. "So that's one thing. There's also…" Annie gave a little shudder, trying to think of how to articulate Pierce's bizarre video message. Better to hold off on it; they had enough on their plates. "You met him already?"

"Yeah, he called me up."

It seemed odd, to Annie. Her going to Boston was one thing. Jeff going to Boston was another thing. Vicki and Quendra going to Boston was a third thing. Russell Borchert going to Boston and calling up Jeff and calling up her (she still didn't know how he knew she was in the city) were fourth, fifth, and sixth things. "So, um, how's he doing?"

Jeff glanced at her and licked his lips unconsciously. "He's, uh, he's adjusting. He got a shave and a haircut — he looks kind of like Chris Elliott now. Friendly… I'd say he's harmless but I wouldn't want to leave you alone with him." He gave her a peculiar look, as though daring her to make something of his protectiveness.

She resisted the urge to smile reassuringly back. "Well, that's why I asked Vicki to, um, act as backup. Oh!" she lit up, remembering something else she could tell him. "You know Quendra's out here, too? She's Vicki's cousin, it turns out!"

He gave her a blank look. "Who?"

"Quendra with a Q? You remember." What she had intended as an emphatic swat on his arm became a caress despite her best intentions. "The blonde girl you tried to use to make me jealous the time I wanted to get Rich to join the study group." Annie immediately regretted framing the Great Annie-Jeff-Quendra-Rich Dust-Up of 2011 in those terms, but tried not to show it.

Jeff didn't seem to notice. "Oh, yeah," he said. "I remember her now."

"They inherited a bakery here, and it's not going real well," Annie confided, glad to have a safely impersonal topic of conversation. "Vicki filled our fridge up with chuffins that are still there even though they've got to be stale by now."

"Chuffins?" he repeated. "What's a chuffin?"

She shrugged. "I have no idea. They're like muffins — cinnamon muffins — but not."

"Hmm. Chuffin. Cheese muffin?"

"No cheese."

"Chorizo muffins? No, no…"

Annie scoffed. "No meat, obviously."

"Chocolate muffin?"

"Cinnamon, not chocolate. They're crunchier —"

"Churro muffins!" Jeff said suddenly, stopping dead in his tracks.

Annie's eyes widened. "Oh my god, _yes!_ " She reached up and gripped his shoulder, pulling him closer without quite noticing what she was doing. "Churro muffins! Chuffins!"

And then they were standing on the street, grinning at each other, wild-eyed, and Jeff's hand was sliding up her back, to the back of her neck, and then the back of her head, and then neither of them were grinning. She looked him in the eye, as he started to lean down, and she tilted her head further up and started to lean into him, and —

"Jesus Christ!" shouted Vicki from their porch.


	16. So This is an Experiment

**WED 19 AUG 2015**

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2245:**

 **[Hello emoji]**

 **On my way home* today I saw the weirdest vanity plate**

 ***Not actually home but you know**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2247:**

 **Did you steal the clipping out of my office?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2249:**

 **Hi, Annie, how was your day?**

 **What was this crazy vanity plate?**

 **[Sarcasm emoji] [hello emoji] [sarcasm emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2250:**

 **She said, dodging the question**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2251:**

 **You said you stole it out of the trophy case to remember me by**

 **So this is an experiment**

 **Like, when I texted you, were you going to be all 'who is this I don't remember any Annie?'**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2251:**

 **The weak link in your plan was trusting Britta**

 **You had to know she'd Britta it**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2251:**

 **Maybe I believe in people**

 **Maybe I look for the good in people**

 **Unlike some people who look for the bad**

 **And are basically monsters [tongue stuck out emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2252:**

 **[tongue stuck out emoji]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2252:**

 **She said you didn't know she'd taken it**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2252:**

 **I knew**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2253:**

 **Can you pretend you don't?**

 **For Britta's self-esteem!**

 **[Heart emoji] [big eyes emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2254:**

 **That doesn't work when it's just an emoji**

 **Ugh, fine**

 **That shouldn't work when it's just an emoji**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2255:**

 **[Heart emoji][heart emoji]**

 **You're picking me up at the airport right?**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2255:**

 **Of course**

 **On Friday, right?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2256:**

 **Yes. I emailed you my itinerary. No changes**

 **Performance review meeting tomorrow**

 **I'll text you after**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2256:**

 **You'd better!**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2257:**

 **DC has been great but I'm looking forward to being home**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2257:**

 ***Actually home?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2257:**

 **[Smiling emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2304:**

 **We're all looking forward to seeing you, too**

* * *

Jeff drew his hand away from Annie's head and straightened up as Annie took a couple of steps back. "Vicki!" she cried, turning towards the source of the shout — a woman on the stoop of one of the houses, leaning heavily on a railing.

"Don't you 'Vicki' me!" she growled. "You ask me to do you a favor, then you're late? And I come downstairs and find you making out with Jeff Winger!"

"We were not —" "That isn't —" Jeff and Annie began to protest at the same time.

"Can it!" Vicki stomped heavily down the steps towards them. "You can do whatever you —" she began, and broke off. "Although as your friend —" she said, and stopped. Then she tried a third time: "I just want you to know, I told you so!"

"I… okay. Let's start over. You remember Jeff," Annie said desperately, gesturing towards him.

Jeff gave Vicki a tight wave and forced himself to simmer down. "Hey, Vicki."

"Eugh." Vicki glared at him like _he'd_ done something to _her_. "How dare you chase her down like — she deserves — you're old and weird and not everything is about you!"

"Hey!" Annie thrust an angry finger in Vicki's direction.

"Oh, I'm on your side!" Vicki told her. "Maybe you're too far gone to see it."

"There's nothing to, to, to…" Annie sputtered. "We're _friends_!"

 _Ouch,_ whispered Imaginary Annie in Jeff's ear. _You understand what I mean by that, right? I mean I don't want to kiss you. I might have kissed you just to be nice but really I'm just happy to see you and I got a little carried away._

Jeff tried to ignore that, too. "Okay, great," he said. "I think we can —"

"Didn't I tell you to can it?" Vicki snapped at him, before returning her attention to Annie. "What the hell are you thinking?"

Jeff recognized the change in Annie's posture as her eyes narrowed and she shifted from _embarrassed supplicant_ to _defensive combatant_. If he didn't do something immediately he might have to pull her physically off Vicki, which, though appealing on multiple levels, was probably not optimal. "Annie, it's great you have someone like Vicki looking out for you," he said quickly, "I know this city is full of creeps."

"Creeps like you," Vicki muttered.

"Like this whole thing with Borchert and MIT," Jeff continued, as though Vicki hadn't spoken. "Really generous of her to go with you." His gambit to derail their trains of thought seemed to work, to the extent that Annie didn't slam-tackle Vicki, at least.

Instead Annie stood stiffly, arms folded. "Although," she said, "Jeff offered to give me a ride —"

"I'll bet."

Annie rolled her eyes. " _Us_ a ride," she corrected. "In his car. And he knows the way to Dr. Borchert's lab, so —"

"Oh no!" Vicki threw up her hands. "I am not leaving you alone with him!"

"Vicki, I'm a grown woman —"

"And you should know better —"

It was tempting to keep quiet and hear what, exactly, Annie was going to say, but Jeff doubted his long-term prospects would be improved if he incited a fight between the roommates. "I can take you both," he offered. "You remember the Lexus. Seats three comfortably."

"Shotgun," Vicki said immediately. She shot Jeff a dark look, and leaned towards Annie. "Do you really want to be doing this?" Vicki whispered, not quietly enough for Jeff to fail to overhear.

He saw Annie glance his way, but her response was low and under her breath, too quiet for Jeff to make out.

Vicki didn't seem to like whatever Annie had to say. "No, that's not true!" she whispered.

Annie folded her arms and stepped a little closer to Vicki. Whatever she said, again, Jeff couldn't hear.

Vicki made a face. "Oh, come on! You're twisting —"

Jaw set, Annie grabbed the lapel of Vicki's coat and pulled her close, murmuring something urgently.

"Okay," Vicki said. "I'm sorry, I just… Okay." Vicki made a show of adjusting her jacket and turning to Jeff. "Sorry I called you a weird old creep. No offense intended."

Jeff felt oddly disconcerted. "None taken."

"I'm pretty sure some offense was intended," Annie declared.

"Okay, yes, God." Vicki rolled her eyes. "Some offense was intended, but I'm retracting, okay? Retracted!"

"Yeah, okay," Jeff said. He shot Annie a hopeful look, and she smiled back at him.

"Great. Well." Vicki stared at Jeff a moment. "You've got a car, let's go then."

This was good, Jeff told himself. Annie was willing to ride in his car. She objected to Vicki trying to stop her from seeing him — because other people making decisions for her was her favorite thing, right? Still, these were positive signs. It was more than he deserved.

* * *

Superficially MIT resembled Greendale, in that they both consisted mainly of buildings and spaces between buildings. Jeff seemed to know where he was going, to Annie's considerable relief; wandering lost across the campus with Jeff or Vicki would have been fine (though which she'd prefer was obvious, really, either would've been fine), but wandering lost with Jeff _and_ Vicki was a nightmare scenario she'd have given anything to escape.

Vicki took her role as more-or-less self-appointed chaperone seriously. As they exited Jeff's parked car, she loudly whispered, "Princess, listen, I know you think everything's sunshine and rose petals, but—"

"Vicki!" Annie hissed. "I told you! I am perfectly capable of handling myself when it comes to Jeff Winger!"

"Are you sure? Because it sure looked like you two were about to climb Makeout Mountain back at the apartment!" Vicki made a face. "If that's what you want to do, great, have at it, climb him like a tree, but you asked me to come out with you tonight specifically to help you fend off creepy guys—"

Annie gasped in outrage. "He's not creepy! He's _Jeff_!"

Several yards away Jeff cleared his throat, in a you-aren't-being-as-quiet-as-you-probably-think kind of way.

Vicki shot him a sour glance. "He's creepy," she whispered to Annie. "Trust me. He's like forty."

"I can handle him," Annie insisted, quietly. "I've known him for years, remember."

"Oh, I know. Who have you been telling Jeff stories to for the last month?" Vicki pointed to herself. "Just think about what you're doing, okay?"

Vicki's insistence was enough to give Annie pause. She'd thought of Vicki as part of that group of people who either believed she and Jeff had been a couple (Quendra, Vicki), or that Jeff was crazy about her (Britta, Mark, Pierce (kind of)). As much as she hated to admit that Vicki's hectoring would have any effect on her, finding out that she was actually on Team Jeb Is A Douche, with Frankie and Quendra, made Annie wonder whether she'd been wrong to think, for even a second, that kissing Jeff was something she should be doing.

Since Vicki had joined them, of course, Jeff had said little on his own behalf. That wasn't necessarily a sign of his being flighty, though. Vicki _had_ sort of bit his head off.

Annie sighed. Things were never easy.

Except navigating MIT, it turned out. Armed with the GPS on her phone and Jeff's experience, they were able to reach the Trapezoid Building without difficulty, despite the growing darkness.

The part where Jeff explained that they needed to get into one of the nearby buildings and then through an underground tunnel was met with skepticism. Still, unlocked door, stairs, tunnel, and there they were, at an elevator that promised Borchert at its other end. Jeff pressed the button, and while they waited for the elevator, Annie checked the time. Five past eight.

"So he's expecting us?" Jeff asked, in the same bland tone he'd been using since Vicki had badmouthed him.

"Yeah. We're a little early." She shrugged with similar exaggerated casualness. "I'm sure it's fine."

"If he tries anything…" Vicki warned. She took out her own phone. "I'm going to enter 911 now, so I only need to hit send if something happens."

"It'll be fine," Annie said, with a confidence she didn't really feel. "Jeff met him already, actually."

"I did, yeah," Jeff said.

"Hmm, why don't I feel any safer?" Vicki asked no one in particular. "Is it because Jeff Winger is a douchebag who'll say anything and whose words and promises mean nothing? I think it might be."

Jeff exhaled heavily.

Annie made a face, and took out her phone.

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 2006:**

 **That was over the line! I said knock it off!**

 **Apologize to Jeff!**

 **[Angry emoji] [angry emoji] [fist emoji]**

* * *

Vicki glanced at the text, then at Annie, who scowled as she pointed meaningfully at Vicki's phone.

Vicki read the text again. "Fine," she said sourly. "Sorry, Jeff."

Just then the elevator dinged, and the door opened. Jeff started to enter it, then stopped, when he saw that the oddly tiny elevator wasn't unoccupied. A woman with a gray plastic cart. Out of the corner of her eye, Annie saw Jeff stir. He knew her, from…?

"Hey, you!" the woman cried, smiling at Jeff. "Jeff Winger!"

Jeff looked slightly pained.

She seemed awfully happy to see him, Annie couldn't help noticing. In the half-second before anyone else spoke, she tried to determine the most likely explanation. Jeff had been here once before. He'd met her then; clearly he'd made quite an impression. Probably she'd given him directions and he'd thanked her by buying her a drink and then he'd given her a lift back to her place and she'd invited him in and… that was Jeff Winger, right? Once upon a time he hadn't been subtle about his romantic conquests (she tried not to think of the box of underwear but it was like not thinking of a pink elephant). Last week, if everything he'd said was true, he'd thought she was hundreds of miles away, and besides it's not like her proximity had kept him from sleeping with women like… well, Britta, sophomore year…

She tried to think of a more recent example, and came up blank, but before she could process that any further Jeff spoke.

"Hi, uh… Linda, right?" he said.

"You were supposed to email me," Linda said, a little saucily, which Annie figured supported the casual-sex supposition. So probably this was one of Jeff's lovers.

"Well, that's your position," Jeff replied, which would have sounded like a curt dismissal if he hadn't been smiling when he said it. He glanced at Vicki, who was glaring at Linda in what Annie supposed was a sign of solidarity with her, and then at Annie herself. His right eyebrow twitched as their eyes met, which, if Jeff was trying to send Annie a nonverbal signal, he should have picked something less ambiguous.

"Mmm-hmm." Linda seemed to have barely seen Annie and Vicki. Also she wasn't moving out of the elevator, and between her and the cart there was no room for them to enter.

"This is Annie Edison," Jeff said, gesturing towards her with an awkward tang in his voice. "She's… she was, uh, in the bunker with us."

"Hello," Annie said gamely.

"Oh yeah?" Linda turned towards Annie, seeming to see her for the first time. "You're visiting from Colorado, then?"

"I'm Vicki," interjected Vicki. No one acknowledged her.

"I live here, actually," Annie said. "I mean, not here. Over in Somerville."

"Oh!" Linda seemed to connect some dots in her head. "Are you two —"

"We're friends!" Jeff said quickly. He shot Annie a quick, nervous glance.

Vicki scoffed, but again, no one acknowledged her.

Well, Annie thought, that answered that. Jeff had just fallen all over himself to assure this woman that Annie was no kind of competition. Which all but confirmed that she was a past and/or future lover, and that Jeff didn't put Annie in the same category. He just wanted to be Annie's friend, overeagerness notwithstanding, same as always. Because he loved her (like he loved Shirley and Abed and Troy) and he'd missed her, and anything else was either her reading into things or else his natural flirtatiousness. His charm. His stupid Jeff Winger-itude…

There was an awkward silence that Annie broke when she noticed it. "I have an appointment with Dr. Borchert, actually. Jeff offered to show me the way."

"Oh, sure," said Linda. "Hold on — excuse me?" She gave her cart a shove so it rolled out of the elevator and came to rest against the far wall. "I was just dropping that back off. Going up? We'll have to take two trips, it's a pretty small elevator." She gestured to the cramped space in which she stood, which seemed to have been designed just barely large enough to hold one person and a cart.

"You go, Jeff," Vicki said, before anyone else could respond. "Me and Annie will take the next one."

Jeff shot Annie a pleading look (which could have meant anything) but when he saw her expression, he nodded. As the elevator closed with him and Linda inside, Vicki turned to Annie. "Like I was going to leave you two alone again," she said.

"What?" Annie tried to keep up a poker face. "I don't know what you mean."

"Sure you don't." Vicki gave Annie a pat on the back, either as reassurance or a show of strength. "You said 'Vicki, I'm going to be going to this place with a creepy guy, I need you to run interference —' "

"That's not what I —"

"That's what you basically said. And, I'm sorry, but it's true: Jeff Winger is the king of the creepers."

"He's — he's not —" Annie sputtered. "And it's none of your business! If I wanted to, to, to _screw_ Jeff Winger, all casual-sex style, like people do —which I don't! But if I did — I can!"

Vicki shot her a doubtful look. "You want to, though? Come on. It's not like you didn't have plenty of opportunity back at Greendale. You've told me a dozen different Jeff Winger stories since you moved in, and the moral of every single one was _Jeff Winger is crazy damaged goods, hands off like he was plutonium._ And, you know, this is why people thought you were a couple, stuff like this!"

"Listen, I don't try to get between you and Todd!" Annie pointed out.

"Okay, whoa. Control Z." Vicki held up her hands as if calling a time-out. "First off, that's a completely different situation. Secondly… it's just completely different."

"Yeah, it is," agreed Annie, "because I'm not in a relationship already, for one thing —"

"Neil and I are broken up!" Vicki protested. "Well. We will be, next time we talk. I mean, we are. He basically knows. I just need to like, formally break it to him —"

"So you're in no position to be giving me any kind of relationship advice, okay?" Annie snapped.

"You wanted me to come along. I'm just looking out for you!"

"Well, Jeff is — it's different, okay?" Annie strained not to think about Jeff and the Linda woman, or Jeff's box of underwear, or the way he'd treated Britta, or the way he'd fallen apart last year when she stopped propping him up. "He's not a creep," she said, hoping she sounded more certain than she felt.

"Hmmph." Vicki sounded unconvinced. She jabbed the elevator button a few times. "If you say so."


	17. He's Just Out in the Hall

Annie silently pressed the button for the fifth floor, and scowled at nothing in particular. The elevator quacked like a duck every time it passed a floor, for some reason, and Jeff's casual-sex-friend Linda had been right about it being too small for four people.

"This elevator is weird," Vicki announced, more to herself than anyone else. "This whole thing is weird."

"You're not wrong," Annie replied with a sigh.

Finally the elevator doors opened, revealing a bland hallway that wouldn't have looked out of place at Greendale, except for the view. One wall was taken up by a bank of windows, showing off the city of Boston at night, visible over the Charles river. Leaning against one of the windows was Jeff. His hands were in his coat pockets, and he was giving her a sort of beseeching look, and —

"Annie!" A tall balding man in gray sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt greeted Vicki with a wide grin. He extended a hand for her to shake. "How have you been? You're looking well!"

"I'm Vicki," protested Vicki. "That's Annie!"

"Oh! I see!" The man turned to Annie. "You're looking well, too," he said, less enthusiastically. "Sorry. I saw her — Vicki? — first, and I assumed… it doesn't matter. It would take too long to explain. Come along, let me show you — I assumed you were actually you." He pointed at Vicki and Annie, each in turn, as he spoke. "But that's not important. I — Jeff said Annie was coming up the elevator, and I saw Vicki — is it Vicki?"

"Vicki," Vicki agreed.

"I saw Vicki first, is all. I can tell people apart. I can! It's not a big deal. You shouldn't be offended."

Jeff raised his eyebrows at Annie, in a _can you believe this guy?_ sort of way.

She responded with a blank look. "Where'd Linda go?" Annie asked, keeping her tone so neutral she could be an automated service announcement on the subway.

* * *

Jeff flinched — imperceptibly, he hoped — at Annie's carefully flattened tone. "She —"

"Who?" interrupted Borchert. "You mean Dr. Kleiman? That Linda? Or do you mean a different Linda?"

"I meant the Linda that Jeff went up on the elevator with," Annie told Borchert, as she shot Jeff an arch look.

While Vicki and Borchert argued about whether they'd met, back at Greendale, Jeff found himself studying Annie, and that chilly expression on her face. She couldn't be serious, Jeff thought. Was Annie trying to signal that she thought he was, what, overly friendly with the woman? He'd barely remembered her name! He'd made his disinterest perfectly clear , and his aloof demeanor had driven her off as soon as they'd stepped out of the elevator! He didn't even have a way to contact her if he wanted to, not counting her email address, which Annie didn't know he had… Maybe she did. Hadn't someone said something about email? But did Annie really think he was going to exchange emails with her and seduce her? And did that bother her?

No. He had to be mistaken. For one thing, Annie being jealous of Linda — absurd a notion as it was — would have meant that Annie was interested in him, and the jury was still out on that one. The jury was out and the jury consultant was shaking her head and clucking her tongue and muttering that Jeff's client should have sprung for her consulting company's deluxe service package. Annie had barely accepted Jeff provisionally as a chauffeur and bodyguard, services he was happy to provide, but beyond that was just too much of a leap.

As Annie, Vicki, and Borchert began walking down the hallway towards Borchert's lab and Scarlett, Jeff hurried behind. He fell into step next to Annie, who gave him another appraising, skeptical look in response to his anxious smile.

Borchert was saying something about how computer technology had improved since the 1970s. "Moore's law was a little optimistic, I could have told him that, but he figured it out without me. Amazing, amazing how much has changed. You have a computer in your pocket more powerful than the machines NASA and NORAD were using in the Sixties. And so many more flavors of ice cream!"

"I know, right?" agreed Vicki absently.

"Although the cartons are smaller. Everything's in pints, now. Metric didn't take, no one's speaking Esperanto… it's like a completely different world. Don't get me started on how much the culture has changed. I mean big, basic things, like, what does a television situation comedy look like? Have you seen _the Office_? It's got about as much in common with _Happy Days_ as, uh… as these shoes I'm wearing do with the shoes I brought into the bunker." Borchert glanced down at his feet. "Wait, no. Not these shoes. Never mind. I have a pair with velcro. It's not important. Never mind. Instead of laces."

Annie increased her pace slightly so she was between Vicki and Borchert, with Jeff behind them. "I did have one question, professor —"

"Please, Vicki, call me Russ!"

"I'm Vicki!" snapped Vicki.

"I'm Annie, actually," Annie said at almost the same time.

"The first time, okay, anyone can make a mistake, but the second time is just rude!" Vicki made as if to give Borchert a shove, but the way he yelped and drew back made her pause.

"Sorry! I'm sorry. You're about the same height, and you both have remarkably clear skin, just top-notch, and you're dressed in similar styles…"

"Would it help if I wore a hat?" Annie offered. She glanced over her shoulder at Jeff, but quickly turned back to Borchert, with a much warmer expression. "Or I could put my hair in a ponytail…"

Vicki leaned back slightly, trying to make eye contact with Annie behind Borchert's back. "Are you serious? He just commented on our skin! Serial killers do that! I know you've seen _Silence of the Lambs_!"

" _Silence of the Lambs_?" Borchert asked, confused. He turned to Jeff, behind him.

"A movie," Jeff said. "It doesn't have a man in love with an artificial intelligence in it, so you probably missed it."

"Jodie Foster… she was in _Taxi Driver_? Jodie Foster plays a heroic young FBI agent, who…" Annie trailed off when she saw the face Borchert was making.

"Okay, wow, this is all getting to be a bit much for me," he said. He slowed, and stopped at the door to his lab. "Jeff, Annie, Vicki," he said, looking at Annie, Vicki, and Jeff in turn, "all of you at once is kind of overwhelming. Would you mind if Jeff and Vicki wait outside while I clamp Annie?"

"Yes we mind!" cried Vicki, before Jeff or Annie could register their opinions. "No way!"

Borchert flinched. "Wow, yeah, okay, now somebody's shouting. Let's all be quiet, and just, people who aren't Annie wait here. Annie and I will go through there, and I'll clamp her spine —"

"It's actually okay," Jeff said to Annie. "He just puts this thing on your back and shoulders, works through your clothes."

"I see," she replied coolly. Then, slightly louder, she said "Here's what we're going to do. Jeff is going to wait here in the hall. Vicki and I will go with Dr. Borchert —"

"Russ! Please," he said imploringly, "call me Russ!"

"Vicki and I will go with Russ, and he can…" Annie paused, and swallowed.

"Clamp your spine," Borchert said helpfully. Jeff entertained a brief fantasy of taking Annie's hand and giving it a comforting squeeze, but of course that wasn't going to happen.

Annie made a face. "He can apply his apparatus. Vicki will just watch, silently."

"Unless he tries something," Vicki whispered. "Then I scream bloody murder."

"Sounds good to me!" cried Borchert. He clapped his hands together. "Let's make it happen! Scarlett is just in here. Scarlett is what I'm calling Raquel now, she's been so upgraded I thought a new name was in order and you don't need to know all of this, I don't know why I'm telling you, I guess I thought you might be interested—"

"Okay," Jeff said. "I'll just, uh, I'll just wait here. Within shouting distance."

Annie gave him a tight nod as she, Vicki, and Borchert passed through the lab door into the Scarlett room. And then he was standing alone.

* * *

The clamp Borchert had spoken so enthusiastically of turned out to be as inoffensive as Jeff had claimed, just a sort of rod that hooked over Annie's shoulders with a few wires connecting it to Borchert's computer. Vicki cast a baleful eye over the clamping, but Borchert stayed as far from Annie as possible during the short process, and seemed cheerfully ignorant as to why there might be any cause for concern.

"Okay, so that's done," he announced, stepping further from Annie and towards an old CRT monitor plugged, like the clamp, into some nondescript beige metal boxes. "Now, we tell Scarlett what we're doing, and…" He trailed off as he typed rapidly on a keyboard. Symbols appeared on the screen — not, from what Annie could see, whatever Borchert had typed. "This will only take a moment. I'm going to ask you a series of questions, and you just react as comes naturally. You don't have to answer the questions out loud. The clamp will pick up your responses, and send the information to Scarlett for processing. We start with calibration. Are you ready? That question isn't part of the test, I do need an answer for that one."

Annie sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I'm ready."

Borchert nodded. "Oh, one more thing." He turned from the monitor to look Annie in the eye. "I don't mean to pry, and the future is very strange about some things, so, I'm warning you this question might be rude."

Vicki took a breath, in preparation for screaming.

"When you picture yourself with your life partner — I don't mean anyone particular, just… is it a man or a woman? Again, don't mean to pry." Borchert held up his hands. "If the answer is both, or neither, or whatever, that's absolutely fine by me. I just need to use a pronoun, for the test. So…?"

"Are you asking if she's straight?" Vicki asked Borchert.

"Male," Annie said, ignoring Vicki.

"Yeah, pretty much," Borchert said to Vicki.

"What if she doesn't want a life partner at all?" Vicki asked, trying to make a point that was clearly going right over Borchert's head.

He shrugged. "Male, fine, okay. I'm starting the test now. The man you love: why isn't he here?"

"He's just out in the hall," Annie said without thinking. "I mean —"

Vicki snickered, but Borchert didn't seem to register the statement. "You don't have to say anything," he reminded her, as he typed furiously on the keyboard and watched the symbols flow, _Matrix_ -like, across Scarlett's monitor. "It's better if you don't. I need to concentrate to read the output… okay? Here we go. Whose was the last funeral you attended? When was the last time you thought about the deceased? When you look back at the last five years of your life, what was your moment of greatest triumph? What's your biggest regret? If you had the option to live the last decade of your life over again, making the same or different choices and knowing what you know now, would you?"

Annie frowned, trying to process the barrage of questions.

Borchert continued. "Picture the man you love. What could make you stop loving him? How many times have you tried to, uh…" He paused, squinting at the flowing symbols. "How many times have you tried to cut him out of you? What is the upper limit of what he would do for you? That you would do for him? How do you feel about that imbalance? If I told you I was actually him in disguise and this was all a complicated practical joke, what would it take to convince you of that? If I told you that I wasn't him in disguise, but we were in cahoots and this was all a slightly less complicated practical joke?"

Annie wrinkled her nose, nonplussed. "What?"

"He isn't capable of love," Borchert said, spinning around and looking her in the eye, briefly, before turning back to the screen. "Not the way you want, the way you need. He's not that guy, even if he'd like to be, for you."

Annie gripped the countertop for support, suddenly dizzy. She tried to speak, but no words came out.

Vicki saw her reeling and interjected on Annie's behalf. "Is there another question?"

"Oh! Uh, what's your favorite color?" Borchert stared intently at Annie.

She took a few deep breaths, to steady herself. "P-purple?"

A green LED lit up on one of the beige boxes. "Okay, that's it," Borchert said. He turned back to the terminal and rapidly typed for a few seconds.

"That's it?" Vicki sounded disappointed. "What, there isn't more?"

"Of course there's more — there's always more, idiot! Sorry, I shouldn't have said that, Russ, you're an idiot for calling people idiots," Borchert upbraided himself. "But Scarlett needs to process the data. I'd like you to come in again, no sooner than, oh, Friday? For the full session. Maybe you and Jeff can do it at the same time, that would save us — but no, because — unless — I have to run some analyses — either way — now I have both sets, so, you know, time to get cracking!"

Vicki helped Annie pull the clamp off her back. "Well, great," she said. "We'll be going, then? Yeah. We'll be going."

"Oh! Um. Would you like a tour?" Borchert offered. He gestured to the lab. "It's all state of the art! Cabinets, and countertops, and the windows don't open but you can see out of them, that's pretty nice I think!"

"Nope!" Vicki had grabbed Annie's arm and was tugging at her, trying to draw her out of the lab.

"Wait," said Annie. "Wait!" She pulled her arm free and glared at Vicki. "You need me to come back?"

"Ideally this weekend," Borchert said, nodding. "This was calibration — now that we've got this data, I can set up a curve — actually it's an n-dimensional virtual space but that doesn't matter, we're just talking numbers after all, we can call it a curve. I can set up a curve, no, let's say calibration, because that's less wrong. I can set up a calibration, compare the two sets of results, and then it'll be time to get the full data set for the neural bridge —" Borchert broke off, abruptly.

Annie's eyes narrowed. "The what?"

"Science stuff," he said. "Just tell her it's science stuff, that's true, after all, there's no reason she needs to be suspicious… there's nothing to be suspicious about! Well, maybe if you weren't acting so suspicious, Russ. Calm down. Answer her question. She's not going to steal your secrets." He closed his eyes and opened them again. "Science stuff."

"I really want to leave," Vicki muttered in Annie's ear.

Annie slowly nodded. "Yeeeah." She backed away from Borchert, unwilling to turn her back on him, and together she and Vicki reached the lab's main exit.

Jeff was there, still leaning against a window. He had his phone in his hand, but he put it away when he saw them. "Done already?"

"Done already," said Annie.

"Unless you want a tour!" Borchert had followed them out. "It's no bunker, but…"

"It's fine, Russ," Jeff said, catching Annie's eye. Something in her expression made him tense up. "We do need to go, though."

"Oh." Borchert looked crestfallen. "You'll come back, though, right? After I've set the curve and processed the data?"

"Definitely I will," Jeff assured him. He pressed the elevator button, and the doors opened immediately. "Okay. Uh, Annie, Vicki, why don't you take the elevator down, and I'll take the stairs and meet you there." He waited until they were inside the elevator, doors closing, before he moved towards the stairwell.

On the elevator ride down, Vicki suppressed a chuckle.

"Don't say anything," Annie warned her.

"I won't!" Vicki said. Then she guffawed. " 'He's just out in the hall,' you said!"

"Shut up!" Annie cried, laughing a little herself. "You weren't the one whose spine was clamped!"

"I know! Wow. That was, wow… Wow. And what were those questions?"

"I don't know! I mean — oh, darn it. I was going to ask him how he knew I was in Boston." Annie winced. "I gave him my number, back at Greendale, but he called me already knowing I'd moved here."

"Facebook," guessed Vicki.

"Hm, maybe. I can call him, I guess." Annie sighed. "Well, you can see why I asked you —"

Vicki opened her eyes wide. "Uh, yeah! Okay, I take back, like, half of what I said about Jeff being creepy. That guy is creepy. Calling Jeff creepy devalues creepy."

"I'm sure Jeff will be happy to hear that," said Annie.

* * *

Annie and Vicki were quiet when he met them in the basement, but Jeff could tell something had happened between them on the trip down. Nothing good for him, he suspected.

"Ladies," he said.

Vicki peered at him, smirking, until Annie elbowed her.

"Let's go," Annie said. "That was… that was an experience."

Jeff nodded as they traveled along the tunnel to the stairs and exit. "Kind of disorienting?"

"Yes, exactly!" Annie stabbed the air with her finger. "That's the word. Disorienting."

"Sooo disorienting," Vicki muttered to herself. Her mood, at least, seemed to have brightened.

"A bunch of questions, rapid-fire, and you're like, what?" Jeff continued. Part of him was eager to empathize with Annie, to connect with her over the shared experience of having their spines clamped.

"Yeah, and then he says something crazy. You start to think about it, but then he says something else —"

"Yes!" Jeff shook his head in amazement. "You get dizzy —"

"And then, boom, it's over."

"I'm glad it wasn't just me."

They lapsed into silence for a few seconds.

"When you opened the door in the bunker," Annie said suddenly, "was it like that? There weren't questions, were there?"

Jeff blinked, nonplussed. "No, uh, there was just the head thing, and then I looked at —"

When he broke off, Annie looked up at him quizzically. "Hm?"

His mind raced. On the one hand, lying to her about it wasn't an option, not any more. On the other hand, this seemed like a terrible time to spring that particular secret on her. Vicki was right there, listening, for one thing. "It was different," Jeff said carefully. "But still weirdly intense."

Annie hummed, accepting that answer.

* * *

It wasn't yet nine o'clock when they were back in his car, driving through Cambridge back towards Somerville. "So is your erstwhile chauffeur taking you back home?" Jeff asked, eventually.

"Yes! Definitely," Vicki declared from the passenger seat. "I'm meeting —" She broke off suddenly. "I'm meeting a friend later."

"Sure." Jeff rolled _that_ around in his head. Vicki was cheating on Neil, apparently. Jeff hadn't been sure that Vicki and Neil were still together — neither Vicki nor Annie had mentioned Neil, so probably he hadn't moved out east with her. It occurred to Jeff that he wasn't sure when he'd last spoken to Neil. He certainly owed the man an email, at least. But that was less important than the matter at hand. "Annie?"

In the rearview he could see a cropped view of her, staring out the window of the back seat. "Sure," she said absently.

Annie had a lot on her mind, Jeff reflected. He'd been in a similarly introspective mood, following his run-in with Scarlett. Best not to press her for more of her time. Looking back, Jeff would have liked to have talked to Annie about it, at the time. He'd gone so far as to imagine her there, talking to him, in fact. But Annie hadn't confided in him like that in a long time. Or vice-versa.

Minutes of silence passed, before he pulled up outside their apartment.

"Ugh, finally," grumbled Vicki, who wasted no time in exiting the vehicle.

"Thanks for the ride," Annie told Jeff, distractedly. He felt her give him a sort of pat on the shoulder from behind, but her hand withdrew faster than he could turn, and then the back door was open.

"Not a problem," Jeff told her. "Any time you need to get carted around in style, just let me know…" He hoped he didn't sound too desperate.

"I'll talk to you later," she said as she climbed out of the car. He saw her give a little wave, and then the door closed and Annie was gone.

Jeff sat there, engine running, watching as she and Vicki unlocked their building's front door and went inside. Just in case there was a problem and they were locked out and Annie needed him.

Then he killed the engine and sat there for perhaps five minutes, mulling it over. He watched Vicki leave the apartment and catch a bus on the corner, without noticing he was still parked there.

"Oh, what the hell," Jeff muttered, and sent a text.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2117:**

 **Tonight did not go exactly as planned**

 **Hopefully we can meet up again soon**

* * *

To his surprise, she responded almost immediately.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2117:**

 **I haven't had dinner**

 **There's a little curry place around the corner that's open late**

 **If you want?**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2118:**

 **Curry sounds great. Where around the corner?**

 **I'll meet you there.**

* * *

Tapping on his car window startled him. Annie stood there, smiling at him, phone in her hand. "Or we can just walk over together," she said. "I could see your car from my bedroom, you goof."


	18. You Wouldn't Call It Wishful Thinking?

If he'd had his druthers, Jeff wouldn't have taken Annie to Yak & Yeti Fine Nepali & Indian Cuisine Dine In Or Carry Out. That it was just three blocks from her apartment smacked of too little effort on his part, not to mention the paper napkins and cheap plastic chairs. Given the choice he would have bought her dinner someplace with a Zagat's sticker in the front window and a prix fixe menu, bare minimum. But she was there, with him, freely and of her own will, and that was something.

Occasionally someone came in to pick up some take-out, but they had the dining area to themselves. Annie sat across from him, smiling slightly, as she sipped her water. After the busboy carried out their plates of curry, she spoke.

"You are giving me this very intense look," she said. His eyes immediately dropped to his food. "What are you thinking?"

"A lot of things," he replied, studying the dinner. "For one thing, if you told me six months ago that come the end of September you and I would be having Indian food alone together in a suburb of Boston…"

"You'd have called me a liar?"

"No, not at all," Jeff assured her. "Anyone else, sure. But if you said that, I'd assume you knew something I didn't."

She started to smile at that, but her expression quickly turned pensive. "You would, huh? You wouldn't call it wishful thinking?"

"What?" Jeff cringed slightly at her tone, but he couldn't pretend he didn't understand her meaning. He shifted in his seat. "Wishful on my part, maybe."

"Shyeah, right," she retorted, as though gearing up to harangue him. Then she leaned back and examined her own meal. "What are we doing here, exactly?"

Jeff cocked his head. "Eating curry?"

Annie made as if to throw her fork at him, but that half-smile was back. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah." Jeff looked at her a second before taking a bite of the dish in front of him. He'd thought about this moment a lot, since he learned Annie was in the city. There had been long, circular arguments with his imagined conception of her, where he puzzled out what, exactly, he could realistically hope for. The best-case scenario — a romantic relationship — was off the table; he accepted that. Annie had spent a year holding him at arm's length. She'd kissed him, that night in the study room, as a gesture of compassion more than affection. She'd enjoyed his worship of her from afar, the summer she'd spent in DC.

Even if, out of a sense of duty or nostalgia, she was willing to attempt to let him be her boyfriend, nothing good could come from it. After a week or a month she'd realize her mistake, and that would be it. She'd cut ties, and then there'd be no Annie for him at all. Jeff no longer believed he could handle that.

He'd come to terms with the impossibility of romance, in their bleak sixth year at Greendale. He could be her friend, if she was willing to have him. He could handle it, if that was all of Annie he could claim — a slender slice of her attention, while she dated and married and had kids with, built a life with, New Jeff (that lucky bastard).

And if Annie wouldn't accept that? If she didn't want a friend who was in love with her, despite being almost old enough to be her father, because that was too weird and gross and complicated? If he screwed this up, and came on too strong, and scared her off? Then Jeff would take whatever scrap she was willing to offer. A card at the holidays. Pictures on Instagram. A text message once a year, on his birthday.

"It really depends on what you want," he said, not making eye contact.

"What I want?" she repeated skeptically.

"I don't really know what you want," he continued, "and you know what I want, so…"

Annie scoffed. "I do?"

Jeff took a careful bite of his dinner, to stall for time, chewing and swallowing with great deliberation. "I know I haven't been completely straightforward in the past, but I thought… I hoped I was being clear, now." He tried not the think about the contemptuous way she'd scolded him for asking her for a date, that night by the pond.

She stared at him a moment, her expression unreadable. "I guess so," she said after a pause. "I missed you. You missed me… you could have called me…"

He winced. "I told you, I mean, I thought —"

"You thought I was going to leave you. That we'd stop being friends. So you dumped me before I dumped you. Why…" Her voice cracked. "Why would you think I would be okay with that?"

"You're… you'd regret it for a week, right?" he offered.

She wiped her eyes carefully with her napkin, to make sure her mascara didn't run from the tears. Jeff felt the guilt for making Annie feel bad, pressing down on him — a familiar, monstrous sensation. "And you know," Annie said, "you haven't been that clear, actually. _Actually_ you've been the same weird hot and cold that you used to… I mean, what about Linda?" His bafflement must have been clear, because she scoffed. "Oh, don't give me that look! You know what I mean, Adrian Grody. She was obviously up for I don't even know what, and you fell all over yourself telling her we're just friends—"

"Isn't that what you want? Friends? That's what you said to Vicki, and last week at the park—"

Annie threw her hands up. "Oh, don't even! It's like you roll a die every time we talk, to decide how you're going to act, and meanwhile you're…" She sputtered a moment, unable to come up with the right word. "Tomcatting around! Hooking up!"

"What?"

"With Linda, with whoever…" Again, the expression on Jeff's face seemed to give Annie pause. "Like you've done for years. Since before I knew you."

"I don't…" Jeff's voice caught, and he suddenly felt the eyes of the busboy and the hostess on them. Stupid Yak & Yeti not doing more business. He tried to speak softly enough they wouldn't overhear. "I don't do that any more. I haven't in a long time."

"Okay." Annie sighed, theatrically. "Since you left Greendale—"

Jeff cut Annie off. "No, I haven't since you—"

"Since _I_ left Greendale?" Annie's tone made it clear she didn't perceive a meaningful difference.

"Since you made me stop!" he barked, forgetting their audience for a moment.

"What?" Her eyes narrowed, as if she suspected some kind of trick. "When did I ever make you—?"

"Years ago," Jeff said, his voice lowered so that if the busboy and the hostess wanted to listen in they'd at least have to be obvious about it. "You said I was gross and that you didn't care and that if I wanted to sleep with Britta, then fine… and then I just couldn't do it any more."

"Are you serious?" Annie stared at him, her eyes wide once more. "That was, what? Four years ago?"

* * *

Jeff didn't answer her right away. His face had slipped into that crooked smile he used when he was on the spot and stalling for time. Britta had given her a version of the same story, Annie reflected: when the group had found out about their non-relationship, they'd immediately ended it. Annie had just assumed that Jeff had gone back to his old habits, albeit a little more discreetly. But here, he was claiming that the reason she'd never seen him with another woman was that there were no other women. That on the strange day when he'd told her that if they were married he wouldn't have hung out in hotel bars flirting with the barflies, he'd been describing the present, not a purely hypothetical situation.

But surely she was misunderstanding. This was Jeff, after all. She knew him; she knew him well. Their whole long history together had been a story of him pushing her away, and her not being able to let things lie. She'd gotten over him, finally, and she'd even resisted being drawn back in by what amounted to a year-long tantrum, but in the end all he'd had to do was snap his fingers and kiss her once and say he cared, and she'd come running. Jeff had enjoyed having an adoring girl sidekick, back at Greendale, and she'd been more or less content with him as her platonic boyfriend. He liked being enough of a presence in her life that she couldn't or wouldn't date anyone else, but she'd never presumed the converse was true.

His flight to Boston had been another tantrum, a panicked response to an incipient change to their status quo. Because he had to be in charge; it had to be him who left her, not the other way around. _She'd_ never held power over _him_ , she knew; for proof of that she had to look no further than his active sex life. Right?

She studied his face, trying to find a clue as to his intentions. He glanced up at her, then turned back to his food, and the silence between them grew thicker.

Finally, just as Annie was about to give up and say something, Jeff broke. "I think Pierce is alive," he blurted out.

She stared at him in wonder. Was this his way of changing the subject? It was effective; her train of thought was completely derailed. "I beg your pardon?"

He flashed a sheepish grin. "I think Pierce is alive, and Will Stone is in communication with him."

"Jeff, we were at the funeral." Her brow furrowed.

"I know, I know."

"It was open casket," she pointed out.

"I know, but still -"

The revelation of a few seconds previous resurfaced in her brain. "Do you just not want to talk about -"

"But see, it makes sense!" Jeff leaned forward. "I'm here. You're here. Borchert's here. I'm working for Biddle Heath, with Mark, because Pierce arranged it. He probably arranged your job – not that you didn't get it on your own merits, I mean, but that it's in Boston."

Annie tilted her head in confusion as she tried to process his argument. "Did he murder Vicki and Quendra's great-aunt, too? Jeff, that's crazy!" Her voice came out a bit louder than she'd intended. She and Jeff both glanced at the restaurant employees, on the far side of the dining room, as they pretended they weren't listening.

"This is Pierce we're talking about," Jeff insisted in a loud whisper. "If anybody would -"

She shook her head. "I know he's dead, because he recorded a message for me. I went to your office yesterday and saw it."

It was Jeff's turn to look baffled. "Huh?"

"Pierce's lawyer, with the polygraph machine, he showed it to me. Pierce recorded it before he died, on a VHS tape."

Jeff cracked his knuckles. "I talked to Will about Pierce last week, he didn't say anything about a message." He seemed severely discomfited by the notion that Stone had lied to him.

Annie shrugged; she didn't know whether Stone was trustworthy or not. "Pierce said he wanted to leave me money but I had to solve some puzzles to get it, like it was a treasure hunt, and then he didn't finish it."

"He didn't finish the message?"

"He didn't finish his stupid puzzle thing!" Annie cried. "The video that I saw, he talked about puzzles and clues and a treasure hunt, but the lawyer said he didn't actually make the puzzles. He just bought some crossword books!"

"Will told you that, huh?" Jeff jabbed at the air as though Annie had just proven his point. "Because he told me that Pierce finished everything. He had it exactly how he wanted it – wants it. He knows you're here, he knows I'm here… he probably recorded that video an hour before you saw it!"

Annie found herself considering, for just a moment, the possibility that Jeff was right. That Pierce had stage-managed this whole scenario they'd found themselves in, from Borchert to the treasure hunt without clues. That he wasn't really dead, that he hadn't masturbated to death… That he had, as Jeff kept insisting, picked that ridiculous cause of death to throw them off the scent… "Snow," she said. "There was snow outside, in the video. He must have recorded it in the winter -"

"Unless that's what he wants us to think! It's not like he couldn't CGI some snow in. And I had to go to Delaware, stupid Delaware, for no reason, just to keep me out of the way when you —"

"No." Annie shook her head. "It was unfinished. There was a part at the end – there's no way Pierce would have called that video finished product. He died before he could complete it. He said… he said he gave Troy the money because Troy needed something to get his life going, but he was waiting until I left Greendale before he gave me anything because he wanted me to make my choices without the warping effect of millions of dollars. And there some stuff about me and Abed, and me and you -"

"You and Abed?" Jeff bristled at that in a way that Annie found simultaneously endearing (oh, look, he's rediscovered jealousy and now he thinks it's okay to express it) and frustrating (I mean come on, it's _Abed_ ).

"Different stuff about me and you and about me and Abed, obviously." Annie screwed her eyes shut, remembering. "He said he'd considered setting the treasure hunt up as a race between me and Abed, but he didn't want Abed to inherit, and… maybe he resented the way his father set him against Gilbert?" She shrugged.

"What did he say about you and me?"

Annie gave a weak little chuckle, and kept her eyes closed. Even when he was trying to distract her from talking about their relationship, he was still egotistical enough to demand answers about it. Well, she'd never been a doormat for him to roll over and conquer, for him to snap his fingers and she'd sit up and beg, and was she supposed to be a piece of carpet or a trained dog or possibly the Rhineland, in this analogy? Whatever he was trying to do, it wasn't going to work.

"He said he thought we were a cute couple but that you didn't treat me as well as you should have." She opened her eyes as Jeff suddenly began coughing violently. Served him right.

"He said – he said that?" He took a sip of water.

"No, you doofus," Annie told him, trying not to sound affectionate. "He said he thought we'd make a cute couple and I should think about it."

Jeff stared at her for a moment, as she looked back at him expectantly. "Borchert," he said.

Annie's shoulders sagged in disappointment. "Jeff..."

"What's his plan? What are his experiments even about? When I went there the first time it was to ask him about Pierce, but he distracted me with Scarlett and, and weirdness, and then tonight he did it again. Do we know what data he's collecting? Do we know who else's – Craig, Britta, Abed? They were all in the bunker, too..."

She squirmed in her seat and turned her fork over in her hands, thinking. The mysteries Jeff presented were tantalizing, it was true. Annie could easily see the two of them hunting down clues, chasing leads, holding hands in the dark. But he was dodging talking about their relationship, same as always. "Jeff, I want an answer to the question of what we're doing before we answer any other questions."

* * *

Annie stared at him across the table, arms folded. "So what is this? What do you want?"

"What do _you_ want?"

Annie's ready reply suggested she was unsurprised by his question. "I asked you first."

"You know what I want." Jeff could see that wasn't enough. "I want to be part of your life."

She shook her head slightly. "You've _been_ part of my life. You _are_ part of my life. Also you really dramatically exited my life, without consulting me."

Jeff felt uncomfortably put on the spot. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to answer my question," she retorted. "What do you want?"

"I want you. I want all of you that there is. I mean, I realize that you…" Jeff scowled at his plate, unable to finish the sentence. "I want to be what you want. I'd be fine with… I'd be fine with whatever you want, if it means I get to see you."

Annie's eyes widened as she processed his words. She too stared down at his plate, watching as Jeff picked at his food, and took a long sip of water. Never before had Jeff stated his interest in her quite so baldly. Annie took another sip, working up the courage to respond. "What about Linda?"

"What _about_ Linda?" Jeff slammed down his fork. "I told you, I didn't — I met her once. Twice, but you were there the second time. She was flirty, yes, but I wasn't interested, that's why she booked it out of there as soon as we were out of the elevator—"

Annie shook her head tightly. "No, no, no. I get that. That's not what I'm asking." She leaned forward in her seat. "You told her we were _friends_! How am I supposed to take that?"

"You told Vicki—"

"Please. I told you — that was _Vicki_ , not—"

"I thought that was what you wanted! You said you didn't want to date me!"

"What? When did I say that?" Annie threw up her hands in frustration. "I mean, what do you think this is?"

"If I knew that," Jeff said, louder than he probably should have, "we definitely wouldn't be having this conversation!"

"So this _isn't_ a date, then?" Annie raised her voice to match his as she gestured angrily around them.

"This place wouldn't be my first choice, that's for sure!"

"Oh? What would your first choice be?"

"Someplace nice, with cloth napkins and a wine list so I could show off!" Jeff was shouting now.

She shouted right back. "Is that where you took Linda?!"

"Oh my God!" the busboy burst out on the far side of the room. "Who the fuck is Linda?!"

* * *

Outside, they walked back towards his car and her apartment in silence. Or rather, the silence that had fallen over them as they'd paid and left the restaurant, both looking daggers at the busboy, continued. As they walked Jeff tried to think of the right thing to say. "I told you, I never took Linda anywhere." Not the right thing, he decided, as soon as he'd said it.

Annie rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. I didn't even mean Linda specifically, just…" Annie seemed intent on something across the street, away from him. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. "Did you really stop hooking up with women four years ago?" she asked quietly.

Jeff stiffened. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"You said I was gross." He sighed. "And I care what you think about me."

"And since then…?" Annie glanced up at him, then looked quickly away.

Silently Jeff railed at Imaginary Annie for never warning him about this conversation. "Since then, nothing."

"When you'd graduated, and we weren't talking much…?"

He shook his head. "If I ever even thought about going to a bar to pick up a woman, I'd see your face, looking disgusted or disappointed or disapproving — one of the disses — and I just couldn't do it. After a while I stopped… I stopped thinking about it." Jeff swallowed a lump in his throat. "I guess when I moved here I could — should — have tried, but… it just didn't seem very appealing." _And just because I thought you were hundreds of miles away and I might never see you again, that didn't mean I cared any less about your opinion._

"You moved here to get away from me."

"Heh." Jeff flashed a sheepish smile. "Not because I wanted to start sleeping with random women, obviously. I should have known better. I couldn't get away from you. I didn't even want to, really. I was so relieved when I saw you in the park."

Annie hummed, as though mulling over his statement. "How did you find Dr. Borchert?" she asked suddenly, changing the subject.

Jeff relaxed a little — finally something he could talk about without walking on eggshells. "Will Stone. When we were talking about Pierce's estate, Stone mentioned a machine that detects love, and I figured he had to mean Raquel. I called Craig, who said Borchert might have moved to Boston, and then when I pressed Will about it he gave me Borchert's address."

"He didn't reach out to you?"

"No. Will said he didn't use email or the phone. But when I got there he didn't seem especially surprised to see me," Jeff said, remembering. "At the time I assumed it was just him being weird."

"He called me," Annie said. "He asked me to come in. I was going to ask him why, and what it was for, and how he knew I was here… I got distracted. Him being weird."

"Yeah… well, here we are," Jeff said awkwardly, as they slowed and stopped on the sidewalk outside her building, next to his car.

"Vicki's gone for the night," Annie said thoughtfully. "Would you like to come up?" Perhaps seeing him startle, she quickly added, "Obviously we have a lot to talk about. Borchert and his computer."

"Pierce," Jeff said, nodding.

Annie and Vicki's apartment was the third floor of a three-story building. He followed Annie up a narrow, winding and very dark staircase. At the top of the stairs, she turned towards him, almost invisible in the dark. With her two steps up from him, their faces were almost level.

"You could have said something," she said, her voice wistful. "All these years I thought you were…" She shrugged, a gesture he could barely detect.

"I think the events of the last week have pretty conclusively demonstrated I'm an idiot," Jeff told her. "For what it's worth, I can safely say it's the central and defining regret of my life, and that's coming from a man who lied about going to college, whose law practice shuttered in six months, and who both studied and taught at Greendale. I can jerk myself around at least as well as I can anybody else." Half of him wished he could see her face more clearly, the other half was glad of the dark. "Listen, I know you've moved on, and I accept —"

His next words drowned in her kiss.

Jeff almost fell backwards, which would have been pretty nasty given he was at the top of two flights of stairs with Annie leaning against him, but he managed to steady himself with the banister. Her hands were sliding into the gap in his coat, running along the fabric of his shirt. He braced himself against a wall, and responded in kind.


	19. I'm Great At So Many Things

Annie's apartment seemed tastefully decorated, but Jeff wasn't there to evaluate the decor; he was barely aware of anything beyond the woman in his grasp. Annie clung to him, pulling him to her as she stumbled backwards. She tightly embraced his neck as she led him off the stairs and into a living room, denying him the ability to straighten up, lift his face out of reach of her face, and end the kiss.

Part of Jeff — the part of him that wasn't simply an inchoate mass of desire — was equal amounts impressed and stupefied by Annie's aggression. But the inchoate mass was in charge of his actions, and he gleefully steered her across the living room towards a faded pink sofa, his mouth lifting from hers only when he thought he would pass out from lack of breath. He dropped heavily onto the sofa, and scooped her up and onto him before she could pull him over and down onto her — the thinking Jeff was distantly concerned about crushing her; she was a tiny bird, after all. She slid her thighs across his, straddling him. Annie laughed as the motion caused Jeff to slip off the sofa and slide to the floor. He found himself leaning against the sofa still in a sitting position, Annie's eyes level with his.

"Get out of this coat," she commanded in his ear, as she struggled to slip his arms free of their sleeves; it was a fruitless endeavor given the relative length of his arms and hers, not to mention the way the back of the coat was pinned against the sofa. Jeff would have helped her, but he was too busy kissing her neck and running his hands down her back.

Then they were in a bedroom — Annie's bedroom, judging by the pictures. Hung in frames, not pinned to a corkboard, Jeff would later recall, but in the moment his focus was reserved solely for her. A twin bed, Annie on the twin bed, Annie pulling off her blouse on the twin bed, Annie demanding he join her on the twin bed. Him kissing her, her kissing him. Him stunned he'd let so much time go by without this. The two of them, rolling off the twin bed — what was the matter with the surfaces in this apartment? — onto a carpeted floor.

 _Rugburn_ , thought the part of him that was still thinking.

 _Shut up_ , suggested all the rest of him.

It was only then that Jeff calmed enough to realize just what he was doing. The part of him that had been worried about rugburn or hurting Annie began to scream.

In a minute, Annie would calm down and realize her mistake. She would stop kissing him. She would stand up from where she lay on him, her chest pressed against his. She would put her top back on, and she would turn on a lamp, and she would ask him nicely to leave. Then out of embarrassment she would never contact him again.

"What's wrong?" Annie whispered, her mouth an inch from his ear.

 _'What's wrong?'_ repeated Imaginary Annie, her tone sardonic. She looked down at them from the safety of Annie's desk, where she sat crosslegged, well out of the combat zone. _Only that you're wholly unqualified to be Annie Edison's boyfriend. You know it, I know it, and it's only a matter of time until she does, too._

"Jeff?" Annie sat up, still straddling him. She peered down at him, through the dim light coming in the window from the street lamp outside. "What's the matter?"

 _What do you think is going to happen now? Do you think you're going to have sex? You, a man who hasn't had sex in four years? Whose last sex partner — Britta, for God's sake — expressed dissatisfaction with your performance on more than one occasion?_

Jeff blinked, trying to push the voice out of his head. "Nothing," he said, but his voice sounded strained and false even to himself.

 _You think you're going to have sex with Annie Edison? The same Annie Edison who basically imprinted on you at eighteen, who's been listening to your self-aggrandizement for what, going on seven years now? Is there any way you could_ possibly _live up to those expectations?_

"Are you sure?" Annie's face tightened subtly. Slowly, deliberately, she twisted down until she lay half on and half next to Jeff. She kissed the side of his neck, then lifted her head to look into his eyes. There was a hopeful smile on her lips, but in her eyes he saw a trace of anxiety.

 _And the stakes couldn't possibly be higher. You screw this up, she'll be embarrassed — for your sake as much as hers — and that'll be it for you. Over. Kaput. Forget getting a Christmas card or a text message on your birthday._

"Um, yeah, sorry, it's just…" Jeff stammered, breathlessly. "This isn't how I was expecting the day to go."

"Heh. Me neither," she said, propping her head up with one elbow and caressing his chest with the other arm.

"I just don't want to…" Jeff trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence. Hurt her? Let her hurt him? Ruin their fragile detente? Scare her off with his intensity?

 _Now look at her — she's panicking because she thinks this must be her fault! You've completely screwed the pooch. There's only one option, if you want to avoid ruining her life. You've got to get out of here. Run!_

Her eyes widened slightly. As she sat back upright, he realized he'd picked a bad sentence to only say half of. "Uh," he said, as if that would somehow help. "Uh."

 _Run, you monster, run!_

* * *

Under her, Jeff twisted into a sitting position, cross-legged, so she was in his lap once more. Annie's mouth had gone dry. A moment ago they'd been kissing — her hands on his chest where they belonged, his hands on her hips where they belonged; everything had been going great for she didn't know how long. But then, now…?

"You don't want to?" she asked him, aghast.

Jeff swallowed, visibly nervous. "That is not what I meant," he managed to get out.

"What did you mean?" Suddenly his hands on her hips felt less sexy and more awkward. The whole situation felt less sexy and more awkward.

"I don't want to screw this up," Jeff said carefully. He shifted under her, in a way that definitely meant he wanted her to get up — that he didn't actually want her sitting in his lap, only partially clothed.

Annie awkwardly scooted back, off of him and down to the floor. Her legs twisted stiffly around his (stiffly? How long had they been doing this?). "Okay," she said, at least as carefully.

"You didn't do anything wrong," he said, suddenly forceful. "I'm… this is a big deal for me."

"Me too," she assured him. Probably Jeff already knew that — it wasn't as if she often had men (only partially clothed men) in her bed, or on her bed, or on the floor next to her bed. Not like him, with his…

Her breath caught, as she reminded herself that this wasn't something he did a few times a week, after all. Which meant… what _did_ it mean, exactly?

"You are… extremely important to me," Jeff was saying, his eyes darting around the room, looking at everything but her.

"Wow." Annie let out a nervous laugh, which, judging by the flash of fear in his eyes, might have been a bad move. "Did you just, like, have you lost all your game?" she asked him, playfully.

Jeff relaxed slightly, and he looked her in the eye again. He wore an expression of sour detachment, but she recognized it as cover for a relieved smile. "This? This is not my game. You haven't seen my game. My game is subtle, simple, and gets results."

She nodded. "You come to a girl's house, you kiss her until she's woozy, you let her rip your clothes off, you roll around with her…"

"That is your game," he replied. The spark was back in his eye, she saw, as he grinned at her. "Right now I am soaking up your game."

"Your game is, you show a little vulnerability," Annie guessed. "You sucker me in, and then you pounce, and suddenly I'm in your lap…" She slid back into his lap, curling up with her legs tucked under her. "And my top is all the way over _there_." She pointed to a far corner of her bedroom, where her blouse may or may not have ended up, she didn't know.

Jeff made a so-so gesture. "I did get you into my lap."

"I shouldn't knock it if it works," she admitted, "and I did get you into my bedroom, so…" Annie trailed off as she snuggled up against him, in what she hoped he'd recognize as an invitation to get back to the kissing and the petting and the sliding off of furniture, since they seemed to have gotten over whatever had prompted his near-panic attack.

It worked, to the extent that Jeff was touching her again. But instead of kissing her, he slid his arms around her and held her close, his chin resting on her head.

"I could get used to this," he murmured.

"Uh, thank you?" she said, trying to keep the mood playful.

"You are… _so_ important to me," he continued somberly. "I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to mess us up. And my recent track record is not the greatest."

"Ha, well, nothing you've done so far has gotten rid of me," Annie pointed out, pushing back and turning to look at him. "And that includes getting engaged to Britta twice, and fleeing to another city and cutting all ties. Not the best way to make a girl feel wanted."

"Don't knock it if it works," Jeff retorted. "If people refused to do things just because they worked, we'd all be living in caves."

She stuck her tongue out at him, which given their proximity led as if inevitably to a kiss.

"Seriously, though," he said a few moments later. "I know I'm great at being terrible at this, as I'm great at so many things, but I really don't want to be terrible at this."

"So don't be." She studied him. "What can I do to help?"

* * *

He snickered a bit. That was Annie Edison, after all: always eager to help, always ready to push away her own fears and concerns for the sake of others. How many times had he taken advantage of that, over the years? From borrowing her notes to getting her to organize the Save Greendale Committee, to the night he'd acted so selfishly, out of a fear of losing her.

"Oh, don't laugh," she chided, as the laughter died in his throat. "Clearly you need my help on this."

"I know, it's just…" He shook his head. "I'm not usually in this position. Psyching myself out. All up in my head."

Imaginary Annie winced in sympathy. _If she realizes just how broken you are inside —_

"Look who you're talking to," Annie said, demonstrating again the gap between fantasy and reality. "It's okay. Nothing is going to fall apart. Unless you suddenly decide to stop returning my calls and move to South Dakota, ha ha," she added weakly.

"I don't see that happening," he told her, sensing that in that moment it was she who needed the reassurance.

"We can take it slow—"

"I don't know if we could take it any slower," Jeff said. "It took me five years to get from first to second base."

"Keep up that attitude, mister, and I'll take away your pants…" Annie thought a moment.

No doubt she was figuring out how to make a list to the solve the problem, Jeff thought, and a wave of hopeful joy washed suddenly over him.

"We can make an agreement about it," she said decisively. "One thing at a time. No nasty surprises. No rushing. Like, say… this week, we're not allowed to do anything but kiss—"

"She said, as he stared down at her glorious half-naked body and marveled that she felt even better than she looked…"

"Aw," Annie said, flattered. But then it was back to business. "Next week, well, we'll discuss moving ahead then."

"Are we still talking, in this scenario?" he asked. "Or is it more that we just meet up and silently make out, every night? Because I could go either way."

"Of course we're still talking!" She leaned up against him. "But nothing past this until…" Annie glanced at her calendar. "October sixth."

Jeff's arms tightened slightly around her. "That's more than a week away!"

"Hey, you asked for my help —"

"I didn't, you just —" Jeff gave up talking, to press his mouth against hers. Without releasing the kiss, he picked her body up as if she weighed nothing and turned her in his arms, so she was once again straddling his lap. The situation felt a lot less awkward and a lot more sexy, again.

"Okay," Annie said quietly a moment later, a bit breathlessly. "I'm prepared to entertain alternative proposals."

* * *

Eventually Jeff had to leave. He stalled for as long as he could, drawing the night out, because some part of him feared that tonight was a special one-time-only event. But after a little less than two hours of making out and talking (mostly making out) he and Annie started to yawn and they both remembered work in the morning. If he'd given her the opening she'd probably have invited him to stay overnight and Jeff was in no way prepared for that, yet.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" he asked as he donned his coat. "I mean, there's all the Pierce, Borchert stuff to figure out."

"Oh, yes." Annie clapped her hands together. "Um, should I call you when I get off work, or… I could just head over to your office around five."

 _Meeting at your office means meeting in public. No chance of more of this,_ Imaginary Annie cautioned him. _What I'm saying is, I don't want to have to kiss you tomorrow._

It was neither rational nor something Annie would actually say, he knew, but that didn't stop the thought from troubling him. Annie — the real Annie — saw him stiffen slightly, and mirrored his action, concerned.

"That'd be great," Jeff said quickly. "Tomorrow, my office. Come by whenever you're able, I'll be there." A sudden impulse struck him. "We can get dinner, too."

"Dinner?" She raised an eyebrow. "Someplace with cloth napkins and a wine list?"

Was Annie actually being playful, or was she trying to come across as playful to reassure him? Did she realize how badly he needed the reassurance, or did she interpret his reticence as lagging enthusiasm? Jeff struggled to banish these questions from his mind. "I bet we can find someplace that fits that description," he said with a smile. "We've solved tougher mysteries together."

She nodded, smiling back. "Text me."

"I will."

And then they were standing there, at the entrance to her apartment, and he was looking at her and she was looking at him and he wondered whether he could get away with kissing her goodbye, like he'd done before and would, God willing, do a thousand times again. It was an irrational thing to be concerned about — he'd kissed her dozens of times in the last hour. Before he could psych himself out further, Jeff leaned down and kissed her quickly. Annie's arms came up, and she hugged his neck. They held that pose for a second, before pulling back and smiling their farewells. Jeff and Annie both, going to car and bed and hoping that, at long last, they'd finally turned some kind of corner.


	20. You Know It Was Sarcasm

Annie had trouble getting to sleep, despite the lateness of the hour. The events of the evening buzzed around in her brain: meeting Jeff at the coffee shop, Borchert and Scarlett at MIT, Linda throwing herself at Jeff (maybe not very charitable to Linda, admittedly), dinner with Jeff, then an actual, honest-to-God, unscheduled makeout session with Jeff Winger.

After spending minutes going around in circles, trying to decide what would have happened if she'd asked Jeff to stay the night, Annie gave up and reached for her phone. She started to type a message to Jeff, but stopped when she decided that would probably do more harm than good.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER DELETE THIS), 0113:**

 **I don't even know where to start**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **Is this really happening? Or am I pinning too much on too little evidence?**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **I mean, this is you we're talking about [suspicious face emoji]**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

 **But then again, it's you [heart-eyed face emoji]**

 **[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0125:**

 **Are you up? [Moon emoji] [sleep emoji] [snoring emoji]**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 0126:**

 **Yes.**

 **It's only 10:30 here.**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0127:**

 **What's new?**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 0128:**

 **Troy's new haircut has gotten a little better.**

 **[IMAGE ATTACHED CLICK TO OPEN]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0129:**

 **Cool**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 0130:**

 **I have Jeff's new phone number if you want it.**

 **I only talked to him briefly last week,**

 **But he hasn't called me again, either.**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0132:**

 **That's OK, I got it too**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 0133:**

 **Cool.**

 **What's new with you?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0134:**

 **Today was really crazy**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 0145:**

 **For the last ten minutes I've been seeing the three little dots that mean you're composing a text.**

 **But no text. Are you making a reference to something? I don't get it. What happened?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0146:**

 **Sorry, it's super late**

 **I should go to sleep**

 **[Sleep emoji] [moon emoji] [sleep emoji]**

* * *

 **ABED to ANNIE, 0147:**

 **Okay, good night.**

 **Troy says hi.**

* * *

 **ANNIE to ABED, 0147:**

 **Hi Troy!**

* * *

At six in the morning Jeff was usually asleep. By seven he would be up, his workout would be over by eight, and he'd have arrived at the office by nine, but at six, he was usually asleep. Of course usually he hadn't spent any part of the night before with Annie Edison in his arms.

Jeff knew from the weeks he'd spent in their guest room that Mark and Eleanor were early risers (perhaps connected to being parents of a tiny child with what seemed to him to be terrible sleep habits), so he hesitated only a moment before calling.

Mark picked up on the second ring. "Hello?" He sounded concerned but businesslike. Probably he assumed Jeff was calling about some new revelation in one of their cases.

"Hey, Cash." Jeff's tone made it clear it wasn't case-related. "Can you meet me?"

"Uh, sure, buddy. Before work, I guess you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Sure, sure," Mark said. "Breakfast? The hotel restaurant at the Envoy, you can get lobster bennie with truffles in the hollandaise."

"No, no." Jeff sighed. "Uh… the Starbucks by the office, the big kettle one, all right? As soon as you can. I'll meet you there."

Mark knew him well enough to recognize a cry for help however disguised or halfhearted. "I'm on my way. What's this about?"

"I had a…" Jeff trailed off. Date? Had that been a date? There'd been dinner, and kissing, and a meeting with the only mad scientist Jeff had ever called 'sir.' "It was last night," he finished.

"Hmm," Mark said. "You kind of left out a noun there, chief."

"Yeah, I know. I need to talk to someone about it, and the other guy I trust is in LA and he won't be up for six hours."

"Aw," said Mark, flattered. "Well, thanks for thinking of me — you know, I trust you, too. Is this about Annie?" He delivered the question in the same breezy tone he might have used to inquire after a restaurant's precise definition of 'freshly squeezed.'

Jeff shuddered. "No. Yeah."

"Great. I'll see you there."

* * *

Mark met Jeff armed with a small sack of beignets, which technically was a violation of the Starbucks policy against bringing in outside dishes. "I know you're opposed to carbohydrates because of the newsstand hoodoo you think is nutrition science," he said to Jeff, "but one won't kill you."

Jeff shook his head.

"C'mon. I made this batch with extra cinn-a-monnn…" Mark shook the bag invitingly, but when Jeff's irritated expression failed to fade, he put it back in his briefcase with a tiny sigh of regret.

"Thanks for coming out," Jeff said. "I wouldn't normally want to talk to another human being about this, but yesterday was a long day. Plus you're barely a human being, you're like some kind of lawyer-slash-gourmet-chef gnome."

Mark chuckled, taking no offense at Jeff's wisecrack. "So what's the situation, captain?"

"Uh, you know," he replied slowly, already regretting calling this meeting. "In a lot of ways it's nothing. Treating it like something would just make it something, and I don't believe in turning nothing into something. That's repackaging tranches of collateralized debt obligations into new AAA bonds, and that led to the financial collapse. Are you asking me to support the fat cats at the too-big-to-fail banks?"

"Jeff!" Mark scolded him. "I am not letting you chicken out of using words to tell your friend whatever you need to unload. What happened? Did you talk to Annie Edison?"

Jeff cleared his throat. "Yeah. That happened. Talking to her."

Mark raised an eyebrow. "You slept with her."

"No!" Jeff said quickly. "I'm not — I mean, she isn't —"

"Okay, calm down, buddy, I'm not accusing you of anything. She's an adult, remember? We've been over this. What happened? You guys got coffee, right? You were going to meet her for coffee, you said."

"Yeah."

"You were practically dancing out of the office."

Jeff glanced around, as though worried that someone might overhear Mark and deduce that Jeff Winger was not one hundred percent cool and in control at all times. "I wasn't dancing."

"You were basically dancing." Mark waved away the interruption. "So? How'd it go?"

"It was okay," Jeff said hurriedly. "Afterwards I gave her and her roommate a ride to MIT, to meet Dr. Borchert —"

"The guy from the seventies with the love computer?"

"Yes." Jeff glared in a way that suggested he wasn't interested in follow-up questions on that point.

"Carry on," said Mark magnanimously.

"Then I gave them a ride back to her apartment. Then we got dinner." Seeing Mark open his mouth for a question, Jeff clarified. "Me and Annie, not her roommate."

Mark nodded, pleased. "See, that's a good sign. Like she didn't want the evening to end. So where'd you go?"

"Some takeout place by her apartment." Jeff shrugged. "Yak and Yeti."

"Yak and Yeti?" Mark made a face. "Indian-Nepali carryout, in Ball Square out in Somerville. I'm not a fan of their machako takari. If you're in that neighborhood and you're in the mood for something from that part of the world, there's a solid Tibetan-Himalayan restaurant in Davis Square. Martsa on Elm. Ten minute walk."

"Sure, whatever." Jeff felt inordinately frustrated by Mark's chipper attitude. "I'll remember that for next time."

"So then…?"

"We talked, and afterwards we went back to her place."

"Was her roommate there?" Mark asked immediately.

"Vicki was not there, no. She's seeing some guy. I might know him. I don't know. I didn't ask."

"So the woman agrees to coffee," Mark said, recapping Jeff's statements in the style he'd used with witnesses at trial. "You go with her to meet the love computer guy, which is a separate set of questions we can set aside for the moment. You drive her home and then you have dinner. Whose idea was dinner?"

"Mine," Jeff said firmly.

"You suggested Yak and Yeti?" Mark asked skeptically.

"I texted her and suggested we get dinner sometime. Yak and Yeti was her idea."

"Ah!" Mark raised a finger. "You said sometime. Who came up with making sometime right then and there?"

"Okay, yes." Jeff scooted back in his seat and leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. "She suggested we get a late dinner."

"She suggested dinner," repeated Mark, as though for the benefit of a jury. "Let me see if I have this straight…"

"Mark…"

"She agrees to coffee, she takes you along on her appointment, she suggests dinner afterwards, and then she leads you back to her place?"

"Basically," Jeff admitted.

"And you didn't sleep with her?" Mark scoffed.

"No, I didn't." Jeff and Mark locked eyes for a moment. Jeff blinked first, which was unusual. "I left before it got that far."

"So what's the problem, buddy? It sounds to me like you're made in the shade!" Mark gestured grandly, as if to indicate an infinite horizon. "You're all twisted in crazy knots, but she's clearly into you because ladies don't act like that around guys they aren't into. You kiss her goodnight?"

Jeff nodded almost imperceptibly.

"You kiss her a bunch?"

He nodded again.

Mark grinned and tilted his chair back, then discovered the chairs at the Starbucks were not designed to be tilted and righted himself quickly before he fell. "Seems to me you should lock that down and put a ring on her finger and a baby inside her toot sweet! You aren't getting any younger and it'll change your life for the better, take it from me!"

"Yeah, I'm really that kind of guy," Jeff said with a scowl. "Real homebody family man. I totally want to just be with Annie, and spend my life with her. I want to marry her and have a kid or two, and treat her career and goals as equal in importance to my own. I want to make her smile, and I want her to make me smile. I want to grow old together, until on my deathbed she holds my hand and kisses me goodbye."

Mark looked at him.

"That was sarcasm!" Jeff snapped.

"Was it?" Mark asked gently.

"You know it was sarcasm."

"Do I?" Mark asked in the same tone.

"Okay, I get the point you're trying to make."

"Do you?"

"Knock it off!"

"All right, all right. You had what sounds like a very successful date with this girl. You're nuts about this girl. All signs point to her being nuts about you. Why are you acting like this is bad news you need to chew over with a friend? This is all great news you get to celebrate with your buddy! Have a beignet!" Mark proffered the bag of beignets again.

Jeff took one with a sigh — it weighed almost nothing in his hand, a little pillow of fried dough that was to a donut hole as filet mignon was to a fast-food hamburger patty. "You're right. I just worry that…" He paused to pop the beignet into his mouth.

The explosion of flavor caused Jeff to lose his train of thought entirely. His eyes widened and he looked at Mark with new respect. "Damn!" he cried, his mouth still full. "This is delicious! What's in this?"

"Hope and love," said Mark fondly. "Also way more sugar and butter than you'd think. And quite a bit of cinnamon."

* * *

The sound of rapping on the front door of her apartment woke Annie, but the indistinct shouting was what got her out of bed. It was a woman's voice — her first thought, as she groggily rose and stumbled to the door, was that Linda or one of Jeff's myriad other conquests had tracked her down. She remembered what he'd said, about those other conquests not actually existing, because of her, and broke into a sappy grin that even the muffled cursing from the landing outside couldn't dislodge.

Annie had to stand on her tiptoes to see through the small window in the apartment door. Quendra stood on the steps, scowling and rapping her knuckles on the wood.

Reluctantly, Annie opened the door. "Hi?"

Quendra glared at her. "Nice pajamas. Where is she?"

"What?" Annie rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. "What time is it?"

"It's quarter to six, which means she's over an hour late! Where is she?!" Quendra stomped her foot in frustration, like a Victorian children's book character.

"Vicki's not here," Annie said slowly. "She's been sleeping at Todd's."

" _Ugh_ , Todd!" Quendra shuddered. "I hate that guy!"

"Me too, he…" Annie trailed off, remembering. "Wait, no, that's a different Todd. This Todd is… I don't know. I only met him the one time. It's super early…"

"Can I use your phone?" Quendra asked Annie. "I tried to call her on mine but I think Vicki blocked me."

"Sure." Annie yawned and gestured for Quendra to enter the apartment, as she turned and went back to her room to fetch her phone.

Quendra followed Annie in, and sat down on the sofa. "So what's new with you?" she called after Annie, down the hall.

"Oh, yesterday was crazy. I…" Annie called back. She shook her head, unsure where to begin, and picked the least-fraught topic. "Pierce — one of my friends from back home died last year. I found out he left me a lot of money in his will, except I can't actually get it."

"Well, that sucks. Jerking you around from beyond the grave. Guys, huh?" Quendra reached out greedily for the phone as Annie came back into the living room.

"Yeah, I don't know," Annie said as she tossed the phone to Quendra. "Maybe we can figure something out. I haven't had time to think much about it, what with… stuff."

Quendra cooed an affirmation while fiercely scanning through Annie's contacts for Vicki. "I'm sure. You're super smart. Although inheriting is not the easy-street way to get rich that some people think it is," she warned. "You have to get up early and bake stuff, like, every day, and it's exhausting and your cousin who's supposed to be helping you blows you off half the time… ugh." She held the phone up to her ear, then whispered loudly to Annie, "It's ringing."

Annie stretched in place, and weighed going back to bed for a little while against getting an early start to the day. Twenty minutes of extra dozing wasn't going to make any real difference in her exhaustion level, but on the other hand, bed was so comfy…

"Vicki! It's — what?" Quendra made a face. "No, this is Quendra! What do you mean, how did…? Seriously?" Quendra stared up at Annie, eyes wide. "Seriously?!"

"What?" asked Annie, although she was pretty sure she already knew what Vicki was telling Quendra.

"Yeah, well, anyway you need to get to work! And you should unblock me!"

Annie could just make out the sound of Vicki's voice through her phone's speakers, though not what Vicki was saying.

"I don't care! He's not _my_ problem! You made your bed, now you gotta deal with it! Aunt Myrtle's bakery is — no!" Quendra glowered at nothing in particular as she listened to Vicki's response. "Okay, fine. Love you bye!" She hung up with a decisive stab at the phone.

Annie chuckled nervously. "So what did…"

"She said you're back with Jeb!" Quendra pointed dramatically at Annie, phone still in hand. "J'accuse!"

Annie reddened. "What? No! I'm not — his name is _Jeff_ , for one thing, and Vicki doesn't know what she's talking about!"

"Annie, you've got to be strong!" Quendra exhorted her. "Jeb is not the guy for you! We talked about this! You said you weren't going to talk to him!"

"I know," Annie replied helplessly, though actually she was far from sure she'd ever said that.

"So what happened?"

"Um. Well. I talked to him…"

Quendra shook her head sadly. "That's just asking for trouble. I mean, this is Jeb you're talking about. Mister Silver-Tongued Devil Guy, right?"

Annie made a so-so gesture.

"Did you have sex?"

Annie gasped, affronted. "What? No!"

Quendra looked at her suspiciously.

"We made out," Annie admitted.

"And…?" Quendra prompted.

"And nothing! Pants stayed on! I didn't even take my bra off! We just talked, and kissed, for a couple of hours last night. Mostly kissed."

"Ugh, that's just as bad."

"Well, we'd talked earlier. Listen," she said, "the total ratio of talking to kissing for the day was heavily weighted towards talking. We just kissed a lot at the end."

"Tusk tusk, Annie," Quendra said with a slow shake of her head. "Tusk tusk."

"I don't think that's how you say—"

"I mean, is he, like, all crazy about you? Yes. Did he follow you all the way across the country? Yes. Is he still super hot? I'm betting yes—"

"He didn't follow me across the country!" Annie winced. "I mean, kind of he did but it was an accident."

"But does he jerk you around? Also yes! Did he break your heart? Also yes again! Is he a super big douche? Also yes again also!" Quendra nodded, agreeing with her own assertions. "Although," she added, "maybe you want to let him buy you some presents first. He's rich, right? I mean, yes, he went to Greendale, but also he's a lawyer, right?"

"That isn't important," Annie declared. "What's important is that he's… we're talking again, and he's still… he's Jeff."

Quendra stared at her a moment. "I don't know what that means. Jeb is jeff? Like a computer picture?"

"No, not gif, his name is Jeff —"

"Fine, sure, I don't really care," Quendra said with a shrug. "Ugh. I have to go bake stupid chuffins but you should think about what I said."

"That Jeff is super hot?"

"No! Well, yes. But also the stuff about him being a douche," Quendra rose to leave. "I mean, I know Vicki thinks he's a douche but she thinks everyone's a douche and she doesn't like douches jerking her friends around. But whatever, she's just upset because she broke up with her stupid lame boyfriend last night."

"Vicki broke it to Neil?" Annie sat up. "Or, wait, did she end it with Todd?"

Quendra shrugged. "I wasn't really listening. Anyway, you do you, girlfriend. I mean, you should be grateful we're not really friends," she said, "because then I'd be trying to say nice things about your boyfriend instead of being honest with you. And those really are cute pajamas. I love your top. Bye!"

"He's not my boyfriend!" Annie cried, as Quendra stomped off down the apartment stairs. Really she wasn't sure what Jeff was, at this point, but 'boyfriend' definitely didn't sound right.

Not yet, anyway.

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 0603:**

 **Are you okay? Quendra said you broke up**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 0609:**

 **Been better**

 **I'll be ok thanks**

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 0611:**

 **[Hug emoji][Hug emoji][Hug emoji]**

 **Where are you?**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 0612:**

 **I just got off the train, heading to the bakery**

 **Take it from me, don't try to have a local boy and a long-distance boy both**

 **You end up with zero boys**


	21. This Is A Big Deal

The day passed quickly for Annie, partly because of the stack of paperwork she was assigned. It was the last day of September, which meant it was the last day the last quarter of the fiscal year, which meant everyone was turning in reimbursement forms at the last minute, which meant she spent the entire day processing reimbursement forms. Whenever the stack on her desk got too small, someone else would drop off another handful of papers; her inbox never completely emptied but she kept pace with the flow of documents, such that it never overflowed, either.

At least, not until two minutes to five, when David her supervisor dropped a hefty stack in front of her. It landed with a palpable thud, and she realized she would need to stay late to get it all done.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1659:**

 **I have to work late [sad emoji] [sorry emoji]**

 **End of the quarter stuff. This is not me blowing you off I promise!**

 **Not sure how long it will take**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1703:**

 **Ok, keep me updated if the situation changes**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1843:**

 **I'm still at the office and will be for a while**

 **If you're still up to grab dinner later?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1941:**

 **I'm done! I can head over to you**

 **If it's not too late to meet?**

 **[Big eyes emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1945:**

 **Of course not**

 **You know the address?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1948:**

 **On my way!**

* * *

As she prepared to get up and finally leave the office, Annie scanned the text conversation. It seemed really mundane and normal, she decided with a hint of pride. It proved that she and Jeff could have a normal text conversation without it getting all weird.

In the elevator down she started to compose a text to Jeff's old number, telling him about this small triumph in her ongoing quest to establish some kind of normalcy with him, but she stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing. Then she considered, briefly, texting his old number to tell him about how she didn't need to text his old number any more, and marveled at how dorky she could be when no one was looking. For more than a month she'd been sending messages out into the void, knowing that they weren't reaching Jeff or anybody.

If she was going to text someone else about it, Annie reflected, Abed or Frankie or Shirley or someone, she would have to supply a lot of context. That she'd been texting Jeff's old number since he vanished on her. That she'd kept texting him long after she knew he wasn't getting the messages, because she liked to imagine him being there for her to talk to. That she'd still been texting him even after the day, almost a week ago now, that she found out he was in the same city as her. That even when she hadn't been sure what to say to Actual Jeff, she'd relied on Old Number Jeff as a sounding board, an image of him in her head.

That she'd realized, even while she was suffering under the weight of Jeff's mixed messages, that she still wanted him in her life. That she'd decided to call him, moments before he'd called her, yesterday at lunch. That they'd had coffee, and danced around the whole Jeff-ran-away-from-her thing, and then he'd offered to take her to MIT, and then they'd had dinner. That at dinner she'd finally gotten some kind of straight answer out of him, in terms of what he wanted.

Abed or Frankie or Shirley or someone would have a lot of follow-up questions, if Annie supplied all that context. And she wouldn't even have gotten to the really crazy part: that Jeff had been celibate for years, because apparently she'd told him one-night stands were gross at some point. That even after he'd left Greendale — both times — he hadn't even really considered picking it up again. That she was more important to him than she'd known.

Annie tightened her coat around herself as she left her building's lobby and walked out into the chilly night. She had given Jeff's revelation a lot of thought, trying to get to sleep the night before and whenever she had a moment over the course of the day, just working to wrap her head around that idea. Years ago, before she was even twenty-one, he'd decided that if he couldn't sleep with her, he didn't want to sleep with anybody. That was around the same time that they'd become closer friends, she reflected, around the same time that Jeff had begun occupying the space in her life that would have been taken up by a boyfriend, if she'd had one. She'd never suspected, though, that while he was acting as her platonic boyfriend, she was doing the same thing for him. She'd hoped, sometimes — especially in the span between her twenty-first and twenty-second birthdays, when it had felt like they were slowly feeling something out, slowly building to something — but she'd never really believed it was a possibility. And now, years after the fact, he was suddenly ready to talk about it and move forward.

It occurred to Annie that 'suddenly' perhaps wasn't an appropriate adjective, given their history. _A history marked by deniable stolen glances and supposedly-platonic shoulder-holding,_ she reminded herself. Jeff had never spoken to her about it, denying what was between them even after she'd pulled out all the stops: a quarter in Troy's butt, her pre-recorded taunting phone call. She'd done her best to create a situation where he couldn't get out of talking to her about it. But even then he'd refused, either because he still hadn't worked it out for himself, or because he was afraid of her rejecting him (she wouldn't and hadn't and couldn't, but he was neurotic about the possibility of rejection and hostile to emotional honesty). Self-loathing, fear of aging, maybe just a lack of enthusiasm because he was more into the idea of being tragically not with her than with the idea of being with her…

 _Okay, he has a lot of issues,_ Annie reflected as she entered the lobby of the building containing the Biddle Heath office, and the vanilla candle scent hit her again. She'd known that for years. He'd spent a year pouting when she tried to create a little distance between them, after all, a full year. Last night, when he'd made that declaration about how much he regretted the way they'd spent the past few years and dropped his no-hookups bombshell, and she'd surrendered to temptation and thrown herself at him… She signed the building's guest register, and sighed. He'd been tentative but eager, skittish but enthused, nervous but interested in just kissing her for a couple of hours as though they were teenagers, or what she'd always assumed other teenagers had been like. That had been a sea change, hadn't it? It was a clear signal he wanted to be open.

And now she was about to meet him, again. What might have happened if she'd suggested he stay the night last night? It was another question that had been rolling around in her head all day. Would she end up making that suggestion tonight? Would he? Would they just meet up for pizza and… study anthropology together, they way they'd used to? Would he sweep her off her feet with roses and a tuxedo and whatever other reality-television romance signifiers he could throw together?

As she rode up to his office, Annie leaned back and rested her head on the elevator wall, eyes closed. _Keep your head in the game,_ she ordered herself. _You're knee-deep in it now._ They needed a plan of action to deal with Pierce's will and Borchert's magic computer. That was the goal for the night, nothing else.

* * *

Jeff sat in his office, fretting. He'd kicked Mark out a half-hour earlier, on the grounds that if Mark didn't get home in time he'd miss his daughter's bathtime and then Julie would go to bed all filthy and unwashed.

"That wouldn't happen, buddy," Mark had assured him. "Eleanor can be trusted to bathe our child as needed. And I'm still waiting on a couple of emails, so I can wait in here with you, no problem."

"I'm just going over the documents from Interslice's data dump," Jeff had replied, "I'll be fine."

Mark had looked doubtful, but acquiesced, leaving Jeff alone. Then as the minutes ticked by, Jeff began to worry irrationally that Annie wasn't going to text him again and he'd spend the evening in his office working late like a productive idiot. Well, the joke was on someone else, he decided: maybe he'd hang out in his office all night, possibly overnight, but he wasn't going to do work. And he wasn't about to spend hours reviewing every aspect of his time with Annie the day before, either. He'd already done that enough for one day.

But there wasn't anything he wanted to see on Netflix, and the Interslice documents were going to have to be sorted eventually, so he started skimming through them. Slowly and halfheartedly at first, but then he saw something that made him do a double take and sent him scrambling through the stack of papers he'd carted back from Delaware, looking for a particular report on the holding company that owned Laser Lotus. He'd just found it when his phone started chirping at him. Annie — great, because she should know about this. She'd know what it meant.

"Hello?" he greeted her excitedly.

"I'm in your lobby, where are you?"

Jeff pulled the phone from his mouth and called out to her. "In here!"

"Jeff?" she called back, and he heard it both over the phone and, muffled, from down the hall.

They met just outside the office of another one of the partners, a woman named Melanie that, Jeff would later learn, was also working late that night and didn't much appreciate his shouting while she was trying to write a brief. In the moment he'd forgotten that he and Annie weren't the only people in the office (the world, really).

"Sorry I'm so late," Annie began. "It's the last day of the fiscal year, and everyone was last-minute with their reimbursement forms, and —"

"Not a problem," Jeff assured her. "You look great and I'm happy you're here." He gripped her hand in his, and led her back toward his office. "I have something to show you!"

"Okay," Annie said uncertainly. "I know we have a lot to talk about, and figure out, and define and… I look great?"

"Absolutely!" Jeff flashed a smile at her over his shoulder as he all but pulled her into his office. "You always look great, you know that."

"Yeah?" she said, looking up at him.

Jeff nodded. "I've been working on Laser Lotus," he explained, "and they turned over the Interslice discovery materials this afternoon, so I was reading through them and guess what I found!"

When she realized he was waiting for her answer, Annie made a face. "Okay, I think we should start by talking about Pierce and maybe Dr. Borchert."

"Right, of course. That's what I'm doing."

"You are?" she asked skeptically. "Can you start over?"

Jeff realized he'd neglected to provide some needed context. "Sure. You look great, I'm thrilled to see you, and we should eat, but first, check this out." He pointed to a PDF open on his monitor.

"So this is your office," Annie said doggedly. "It's nice."

"Yeah, thanks. The firm's involved in a suit between two telecoms, Laser Lotus and Interslice. We're Laser Lotus, okay?"

"With you so far," Annie said in a tone that suggested she wasn't, entirely.

"The name's kind of a giveaway, am I right?"

Her eyes narrowed. "It's something to do with Pierce's church?"

"Exactly!" Jeff snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "You're as brilliant as ever."

"Oh, um, thanks," she said, nonplussed.

"It's Pierce's company he founded with Russ Borchert back in the seventies. Interslice wants to gain control of —"

"Wait, how is Borchert involved?" Annie interrupted.

"He's not. I don't think he is. He might be. It's not impossible. Someone is definitely pulling the strings, let me tell you…"

"You're all fired up, aren't you?" Annie said with a bemused smile. She paused a moment, enjoying his enthusiasm. "I haven't seen you this worked up in years."

Jeff couldn't keep it back any longer. "Pierce owns Interslice!"

"Huh?"

"He's suing himself," Jeff explained. "Interslice is trying to dick with Laser Lotus, but controlling shares in both are owned by the estate of Pierce Hawthorne! There's a bunch of shell companies and bull like that, but there it is — you see that number? You see this number?" He pointed to one line of the Interslice PDF on the screen, then to the Laser Lotus document he'd pulled from the stack. "They're the same ID number!"

Annie still didn't get it, to his chagrin. "Why would he…?"

"To mess with me!" Jeff cried. "What — why — why does anyone do anything? Self-loathing," he pointed to himself, "and love." He pointed to Annie. "Self-loathing in this case. Pierce thinks we're two of a kind, clearly, and he resents my being younger and smarter and much better-looking… I mean, it's obvious when you think about it." He ran his hands through his hair, because they were shaking a little and he needed to do something with them.

Annie suddenly grinned. "Wow, you really _are_ all worked up. Why don't we sit down and you can catch your breath, and then we can get some food, okay?"

"This is a big deal," Jeff insisted as he sat at his desk. "It's basically proof Pierce is alive! We need to… investigate."

"Uh huh." Her wry tone suggested she interpreted his revelations as just a pretext for the two of them to run around doing a thing. And while she wasn't entirely wrong, there was more to it than that…

"I'm serious!"

"I know you are," she said, her smile barely contained. "How do you want to start? Search Will's office for clues?"

"No… no, wait. Yes!" Jeff felt a rush of excitement; with Annie's support he could do anything. "Yes, let's do that."

"Whoa," she cried as he started to lead her towards Stone's office. "I wasn't actually serious. If he found out you'd broken in —"

Jeff waved away her concerns. "I'll talk to him about it tomorrow. This thing with Pierce, I'm sure Will expects us to toss his office for clues!"

"Yeah, okay." To be fair, Annie did not take very much convincing. She followed him back out into the hall, and the short distance to the door to Stone's office.

"Unlocked," Jeff said brightly, testing the knob and then opening it. "He may as well have hung up a sign inviting us to come in and look around."

Annie rolled her eyes, but followed him inside without protest.

Within there was darkness, until he flipped on a light switch. Then there was just Stone's somewhat drab office, all beige carpet and unfashionable paneling. It closely resembled Jeff's, but for the large bookcase and the potted plant on the windowsill.

"We should hang up some more art in the office," Jeff mused. "Okay. Clues." He crossed to Stone's desk and began opening drawers. Pencils, cables for electronics, half a bag of pistachios…

Annie, meanwhile, was checking out the bookcase. "This has been moved," she announced, as she examined the depressions it left in the carpet. "I remember it was over here… it's been moved about a foot since Monday."

"Moved to hide something?" Jeff guessed.

"Or to access…" Annie trailed off as she probed the paneling next to the bookcase. "Aha!" A press on one corner of a panel, and a hidden cabinet swung open from within the wall.

Jeff scowled, because he didn't have a hidden cabinet in his office, as far as he knew. "What's in there?" he asked anxiously as Annie poked her head inside the darkened interior.

"Tapes!" she cried, pulling out a stack of VHS tapes and examining the labels. "They all say Hawthorne and they're numbered…. Eight, nine, ten tapes!" She looked over her shoulder at Jeff, confirming that he looked as excited as she felt. "Pierce's lawyer said he barely finished the one tape!"

"What did I tell you?! Will's been lying to us!"

Annie rose, clutching a couple of the tapes. "He had a VCR," she began.

"Break room," said Jeff. He moved to the doorway and turned, beckoning her.

As Annie approached Jeff, he suddenly grabbed her and pressed her against the doorframe. He kissed her, and the VHS tapes she'd been holding clattered to the floor.

"Okay, I was wondering when that was going to happen," Annie said breathlessly a moment later. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Now come on, break room!" Annie scooped up the dropped tapes and pushed past him and out into the hall. "Grab the rest of the tapes!" she called over her shoulder.

Jeff stood there and grinned for a moment before complying.

* * *

"Hello Annie," said Pierce. He flickered, ghostlike, on the milky VHS, as he stood leaning against a fence in odd, awkward pose meant perhaps to evoke casualness. The high-quality suit had been replaced by jeans and a Greendale sweatshirt. "I hope you enjoyed my little joke at the expense of Adam West, television's Batman. He's fine, by the way. We're good friends."

The camera zoomed out slightly, revealing Adam West where he had been standing just out of frame. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a genial smile. "Hello, Annie," he said, waving. "Don't worry, I didn't take it personally. In fact, I had a rodeo clown for a brother-in-law for a few years during the Kennedy administration."

"This next clue — I'm pretty proud of this one — relates to the scepter you found in Cincinnati," Pierce declared as the camera zoomed back in on him. "Are you ready? Eighteen, twenty-three, four —"

Annie paused the tape, catching Pierce in the middle of what looked like a grotesque sneeze. She and Jeff exchanged a baffled look. They sat side by side at a table in the law office's breakroom, a narrow closet containing a VCR and TV on a cart alongside the microwave and table and chairs.

"What number tape is this?" he asked her.

"One," she said. "I thought it would be the one he showed me… the one he said was the only one. I wanted to show you that first." Her brow furrowed. "He also said Pierce didn't actually make any puzzles or clues…"

"So what are these, then?" Jeff examined one of the VHS tapes. "They're short," he observed.

"Huh?"

Jeff sighed, chagrined. She was born in 1990, she barely knew VHS. "Short running time." He tapped the clear plastic, indicating the roll of magnetic tape inside. "Thirty minutes, at most. You can tell from the size of the reel."

"That's good! Thirty minutes a tape, ten tapes, we're done by one, one-thirty at the latest." Annie took out her notebook and a pen. "Assuming the others aren't all blank."

Jeff nodded and rewound the tape to the beginning.


	22. I Used To Want To Kiss You

Chapter Text

HAWTHORNE VIDEO CLUE #1

Hello, Annie. I hope you enjoyed my little joke at the expense of Adam West, television's Batman. He's fine, by the way. We're good friends.

This next clue — I'm pretty proud of this one — relates to the scepter you found in Cincinnati. Are you ready? 18 23 4 12 18 3 20 8 11 15 2 5 14 25 7 13 3 11 2 18 21 4 15 1 20 14 9 4 12 9 15 7 3 13 11. Good luck!

* * *

HAWTHORNE VIDEO CLUE #2

Hello, Annie. Oh, this is fun. I figure by this point you've gotten tired of number ciphers — I had to hire a man for that, I'm not really a numbers guy — but I explained I wanted the cipher key to involve paintball, and he said he could do that, so, hopefully it worked out. Otherwise Will had to give you the emergency hint. Or, I suppose it's possible that you never actually see this, and thousands of years in the future this tape is the only artifact of our civilization to survive the Great Disaster. In which case, let me tell all you mutant tigers and giant bugs and radioactive god-watchers of the distant future, hands off my stuff!

I probably should have written out a script for these in advance. Too late now. Time for the next clue. I'm sure you've discovered what happens if you insert the scepter into the slot in the strongbox, and yes, that is a sexual metaphor. Scepter in the slot. Heh. If Jeff is with you you'll have to explain to him the mechanics of heterosexual love… though maybe that's already come up, heh. Irregardless, the clue is 'when gold and silver converge, the fleeing candle shows the way.' Good luck!

* * *

"Are there actually ten of these?" Jeff asked, after they viewed Video Clue #6. His initial buzz of excitement had worn off sometime during Video Clue #4, which featured a music video (credited to Cool Abed Films, something to ask Abed about).

"Well, on the plus side, they're even shorter than you thought," Annie pointed out. "Only a few minutes long each."

"This is all just him messing with us." Jeff scowled. "Pierce probably had Will plant these tapes where we'd find them."

"I don't think so," Annie said. Then she considered it more seriously. "Maybe. But probably not."

"You want to take a dinner break?" Jeff checked his phone. "There's an oyster house near here that'll still be serving for a while."

"Oysters?" She made a face. "Besides, we need to finish watching these, so we can put them back before Will finds out we found them!"

"Huh, yeah, we could do that," Jeff said. "Or, consider this: we don't."

"Jeff—"

"Tomorrow, if Will actually shows his face — he's been mysteriously busy since he met with you, no one's seen him and his emails are all cagey — then I'll just tell him we found the tapes. What's he going to do?"

"That's got to be against the rules of Pierce's game!"

Jeff snorted derisively. "The game is him watching us trying to solve his impossible puzzles! He doesn't care about anything but his own entertainment."

"Jeff, Pierce is dead!" Annie was fed up with Jeff's lack of respect for the dead.

"Says who?" Jeff threw up his hands. "Did we ever see a body?"

"Yes! We did! He had an open-casket funeral!"

"Ah!" Jeff snapped his fingers. "But did we really see it? You remember after his mother's funeral, she was supposedly put in that little vapor thing —"

"He was, too, we had the thing —"

"Right, but there was a good ten feet or more between us and the so-called body at all times — there were always at least two Laser Lotus Buddhist priests standing with the body, asking people to move back and saying Pierce's soul needed space." Jeff threw up his hands at the ridiculousness of it all.

"We didn't question it at the time," Annie countered, though she had to admit it was a fair point.

"Because we didn't have any countervailing evidence! But now we've got these. Mark my words, Annie, something is up!"

"If Pierce was faking, would he really pick for his fake cause of death —"

"Yes! Because then who would suspect it!"

She rolled her eyes. "Okay. Maybe." She laughed a little, remembering something. "You'd be the expert, I guess."

"What?"

"Oh, something Britta said. That you'd gotten Borchert's door to open by, you know…" She tilted her head back and forth in an incredibly vague euphemistic gesture.

"What?!" Jeff's eyes widened slightly. Then he calmed down, realizing that Annie had not, in fact, just accused him of having opened the door by directly tapping into his love for her — she'd only accused him of having opened the door by masturbating. "Never mind."

Annie shrugged. "Let's watch the other four videos," she suggested. "Then we can go eat oysters and talk about them, okay?"

She made eyes at him until he chuckled and nodded. "Shellfish and puzzles. That's your ideal date?"

"Well, I don't know about the shellfish, but… wait, is this a date?"

"Oh, no," Jeff said, "after last night we're not going around on that one again."

"I thought last night went pretty well, all things considered…" Annie winked at him.

"Well, yeah. But there was some confusion as to… can we just agree that this is a date?"

"Who asked whom out?"

"I asked you out!"

"When, exactly?" Annie made a show of taking out her phone and reviewing her messages. "I'm not seeing it…"

Jeff scooted his chair over and looked over her shoulder. "There," he said, pointing. "See? 6:43. Grab dinner later, I said."

"Ugh." She leaned back against him, turning slightly in her chair to do so. " _Years_ I waited for you to ask me out, and I get 'grab dinner later.' " She let out a languorous sigh.

"I've asked you out before then," he said, as he considered moving her hair out of the way so he could kiss her neck. "I asked you out last week. And you not only turned me down, you got in a car and left."

" _That_ was asking me out? Seriously?" She elbowed him playfully. "You think I'd prefer that to 'grab dinner later?' 'Grab dinner later' has ten thousand times the romance of 'I fled the state and moved to a different time zone to avoid you but now I want to buy you an expensive dinner.' "

"How about 'let's watch the rest of Pierce's stupid videos and then I want to buy you an expensive dinner'?"

"Hmm, yeah, okay. That works. Someplace with cloth napkins and a wine list?"

* * *

It was only about a ten-minute walk to the restaurant. On the way they settled into a silence that started as companionable and shifted to romantic and was just beginning to drift over into awkward when Jeff started speculating aloud about Russell Borchert.

"So what do we actually know about the guy?" he began, as though summing up for a jury. "We know he founded Greendale. Invented the nine-track tape and got rich. Vanished into his bunker forty years ago. Came back out with a computer that detects love. And now he has some kind of sinecure at MIT."

"Is this what we're talking about now?" Annie asked, as though she were indulging him.

"You like puzzles, right? Borchert is a puzzle."

Annie gripped his arm a little more tightly. "All right. Then before we move on, let's focus on what he was doing in the seventies."

"You know, I've never heard of nine-track tapes," Jeff mused. "Except, you know, in the context of talking about him."

"I think they used to use them in recording studios." She shrugged. "Before he went into the bunker he was planning some kind of computer-radio project that Pierce was going to fund, you said."

Jeff nodded. "They co-founded a corporate entity to hold the rights to it: Via Laser Lotus Telecommunications. I've read their prospectus and it was pretty cutting-edge for the day; they wanted to create the Internet twenty years early, with wifi. Pierce got as far as buying a monopoly on part of the wireless spectrum and a broadcast license from the FCC, but then Borchert vanished and the project fell apart. Nobody heard from him for decades."

"Because he was hiding in the basement of the computer science building at Greendale, with his emotion-detecting computer. We don't know what exactly went into that, or how he survived all those years, but we saw the end result. He had a duffel bag full of cash, and his computer was made out of gold, and also he had paperwork saying that he had veto power over the school board selling Greendale to Subway." Annie hummed and considered what she'd just said. "I don't think I ever said all that out loud before. Reality could use a better editor."

"So he got out of the bunker and became dean emeritus or whatever. We were both there for that part. Then he was sent a letter from MIT —"

"We don't know that." Annie peered up at him. "Do we have a source other than him on that?"

"Craig said he got a letter."

"Okay. He got a letter from someone, inviting him to set up a lab and do research here. So he packed up, moved here. He took Raquel with him, and then he disassembled and upgraded her and made Scarlett."

"Yeah." Jeff remembered something else vexing about his first visit to the Trapezoid Building. "The department at MIT he's supposedly part of doesn't have him listed anywhere, but their directory could be out of date. What else is there?"

"Scarlett," Annie began, and hesitated. It sounded ridiculous, even in her head, but… the questions Borchert had asked her had seemed so specific, and he'd been reading them off the monitor, decoding them somehow. "Scarlett might be able to read minds."

"I don't…" Jeff let out a slow exhalation of breath, recollecting the peculiar questions Borchert had asked him, when his spine was clamped. "Yeah, okay," he said. "Maybe." He gave her a half-smile, one of commiseration, rather than bemusement, and slid his arm out of her grasp so he could put it around her. If he didn't think about how he was, arguably for the first time, inarguably on a date with Annie Edison, then he was less likely to screw it up. _Concentrate instead on the puzzle; it's worked so far._ "He was in contact with Will Stone at my office, which is something that Will didn't try to hide, exactly. He just never brought it up. Much like he never brought up all Pierce's shenanigans."

"And Borchert denied having had any contact with Pierce since the Ford administration." Annie, for her part, had gone through much the same mental calculations as Jeff and was likewise focusing her attention on the problem at hand. "There's a lot we don't know. Is there anything else we do know?"

"He called you," Jeff pointed out. "Didn't he?"

"Yeah," Annie said, not immediately grasping the significance.

"He called you up," Jeff repeated, "which is strange because Will made a point of claiming he doesn't use the phone. Or email. How did he know to do that?"

"My number didn't change; he had it from Greendale."

"But he knew you were in town. How?"

"That's right!" Annie let out a little coo of delight at Jeff's remembering that detail. "He wasn't surprised to see you either, you said."

"Surprised? No. Maybe. But he wasn't shocked. He was really eager to use Scarlett on me—"

"Say it right — he wanted to clamp your spine!" Annie said with sarcastic excitement.

"Yes, he clamped my spine…" Jeff snickered. "We're agreed that's a terrible phrase for it, right?"

"Oh, yeah."

"When he… did what he did, regarding spine-clamp interactions…" He smirked at Annie, who smirked back. "He asked me a bunch of questions, some of which were weirdly personal…"

"Like what?"

His smirk faded. "I don't want to go into it. It was intense and weird and really disorienting. Same as what happened to you."

Annie nodded. It had been weird and disorienting for her, too, hence the possibility that some version of machine telepathy was a factor. Another memory struck her. "You said down in the bunker it wasn't like that."

"What?" Jeff asked, confused.

"In Borchert's underground lab. You said it was different when you wore the magic hat and opened the magic door. However you did that." Annie wrinkled her nose and made another extremely euphemistic gesture.

"I wasn't doing that!" Jeff said quickly. He glanced around, hoping no one had noticed anything. They were at that moment walking across the large brick plaza between city hall and the federal building, the same one Annie had crossed while reflecting on their shared history earlier in the evening. This late in the day it was almost empty.

"Okay."

"I wasn't!" he insisted.

"That's what you said and I believe you." She put her arm around his waist, so she could pat his side reassuringly.

Jeff felt obliged to explain himself, at least a little more. "He said — Borchert said that 'a blast of human passion' could shock Raquel into resetting and opening the door."

"A blast of human passion?" Annie repeated, trying to remember that scene in the bunker. "That's kind of an odd phrase."

"It's the exact phrase he used," Jeff said, with certainty; he'd gone over the events in his head many, many times. He took a deep breath, and pressed on with the thing he'd been avoiding telling her for a year and a half. "So I put the stupid hat on and I thought about you." Jeff pulled his arm back from around her, as he straightened up and shot her a nervous glance.

"I know, I know." Annie wondered why was treating this like a major revelation, a secret he'd borne for too long. "I was there. You made us all turn around for some reason."

He nodded tightly. "I didn't want you to see me looking at you."

Annie shrugged. Typical Jeff Winger, not wanting to let anyone see him for the soft-hearted man he was. Obviously he'd summoned forth his love of Greendale, and the study group. "Well, the alternative to you looking at us was that you were looking at Raquel, or…" She didn't quite mouth the word masturbating. "It's no big deal," she assured him. "I mean, how many times have you said, over the years, that you love everybody in the study group, that we're a family? It kind of sucked that Shirley wasn't there, but I guess the dean was part of the group by then…"

"What? No!" Jeff looked like she'd just explained to him that she was going to marry the Easter Bunny. "No, that's not… I wasn't looking at you, as in the group, I was — you had just given this really passionate speech about letting people pursue their dreams, and I thought, wow, sometimes I start to forget and take her for granted, and what if…" He trailed off into a frustrated growl.

"Jeff, what are you saying?" Annie was pretty sure she'd worked it out, but the conclusion she'd come to seemed impossible. She felt her pulse and breath quicken as her body responded to words Jeff hadn't even said yet.

"Me thinking about you is what opened the door. You Annie, not you everybody." The words tumbled out of him. "It's stupid, I know, because, what does that even mean? Russ is weird and crazy and his machines probably don't do what he says they do. When I was clamped to Scarlett he asked me a bunch of questions about you — I didn't answer them, but the computer, she knew something. Or guessed at something. Or Russ was doing the guessing and Scarlett was a prop. I don't know. But I looked at you and Raquel opened the door. And I didn't want you — any of you — seeing that, so, I asked you all to turn around."

Annie struggled to keep her pace even, leaning into him, then pulled away. "Why didn't you say something?" she asked, sounding more plaintive than she'd meant to. "We'd been… we went on for so long, Jeff!"

He looked miserable, and didn't respond for a moment. Annie reached over and took his arm in hers, again. Finally Jeff sighed. "Ugh, I didn't… by the time I'd worked out what I wanted to say, I could see that it was too late — I thought it was too late. You were getting more distant, and I don't blame you, I was this sick old man you'd used to want to kiss."

Now it was Annie's turn to look at him as if he'd announced his engagement to the Easter Bunny. "Are you serious?" She didn't know whether to laugh or sob. "I used to want to kiss you?"

"Yeah." Jeff chuckled a little nervously, which he and Annie both knew meant he was stalling for time. "I mean, didn't you?" He tried to make it sound as though he weren't concerned about her answer — he'd been pretty sure about that one, especially since the night before, but it wasn't _impossible_ he'd misunderstood something.

Annie exploded at him. "You say it like I ever lost interest in kissing you! You—" She broke off, and took a couple of steps back from him, so she could glare at him without craning her neck quite so badly. "I can't believe you!"

Jeff was a little taken aback. After all, what had that whole dismal last year been, if not Annie saying, over and over in a thousand different little ways, that she was done with him? Any time, from that day in Borchert's bunker onward, she could have had him. He'd always been wrapped around her little finger, they both knew that…

Didn't they? For the first time it occurred to Jeff that maybe they _didn't_ both know that.

While Jeff struggled with this previously unconsidered possibility, Annie was still fuming. She dug in her pockets and found a tube of lip balm, which she threw at Jeff's head. "Annie!" he yelped, ducking.

"Oh, you're ridiculous!" she snapped.

They crossed the street in silence, pausing when Annie picked the lip balm back up so she wouldn't litter. They walked around the trees and glass statues of the New England Holocaust Memorial park, which Annie walked past every day going between the federal building and the subway station. The oyster house, it turned out, was just on the other side of it. When she saw the restaurant Annie stopped, uncomfortably aware of the memorial behind her, and forgot, however briefly, about Jeff's magic-door-related assertions. She weighed the value of satisfying his desire for oysters with the slight queasiness in her stomach that came from just thinking about eating the little gray lumps of ocean-goo.

Jeff saw her discomfort. "Annie?"

"I've never had oysters," she said quietly. "It's shellfish, you know? I mean, I've tried shrimp and lobster, but oysters… It's not like they were on the menu much back home." She shuddered slightly. "I'm sorry, it's fine. This has nothing to do with —"

"Someplace else?" Jeff suggested. "I was mainly into this as a concept because I thought you'd like eating in the oldest restaurant in the country. Mark pointed it out to me once. Daniel Webster used to come here all the time. Paul Revere and Sam Adams too, for all I know. But there's a ton of other restaurants within three blocks of us. I know a place." He extended his arm, a breezy smile on his face.

Annie took his arm and let Jeff lead her past the oyster house and towards Faneuil Hall, past a dozen different chains and bars to someplace quiet and classy-looking.


	23. I Took It As A Positive Sign

There was thick carpet and leather upholstery, a signature cocktail menu and lobster offered for what the menu claimed was 'market price.' The restaurant was luxurious, if generic, and mostly empty by the time they arrived, though it was still an hour before closing. Once they were seated, Annie asked whether Mark had recommended this place to Jeff, too.

"No," he said, looking slightly embarrassed.

"What's the problem?" Annie glanced around, trying guess the source of his shame. "These are cloth napkins, and that is a wine list." She tapped the leather-bound sheet the hostess had left on their table.

"It's, uh, the rest of this building is apartments." Seeing her confusion, he pressed on. "Furnished apartments… short-term corporate housing…?"

Annie smiled. "You live in this building?"

He nodded.

"Why is that embarrassing? It must be convenient, if…" Annie trailed off as a scenario suddenly played itself out in her head: Jeff and some woman, meeting here for a date. Jeff and some woman, drunkenly taking the elevator up to his place. Jeff and some woman falling into bed together, the easy hookup aided and abetted by the ability to go directly from the bar to Jeff's bedroom without leaving the building… She could be some woman, she realized. Given what he'd said yesterday, there weren't any _other_ some women around.

Jeff had clearly predicted her train of thought, given his embarrassed chuckle. "Like you said, it's got cloth napkins and a wine list."

She smirked, confident in the sincerity of Jeff's intentions. "So it'll be easy to get you home, if I get you drunk," she said.

"You've never needed to get me drunk. As if you could," Jeff added. "You get tipsy off half a glass of wine."

"Only on an empty stomach!" Annie shifted in her seat then, as she recalled what they'd been discussing before she'd been distracted. She sighed. "So you've been interested in… in us, for all that time. And that's on top of your, um, not being interested in other things."

He frowned. "Yeah."

"So… why didn't you say something?"

"I might have," he said, more defensively than he meant to, "if you hadn't picked right then to suddenly cool off on me. I thought you knew that I… I thought you'd figured me out, and decided you didn't want to, didn't want me. Because if you had wanted me, I would have…" He gestured vaguely.

Annie scoffed. "Oh, don't pin this one on me, buster! You shot me down so many times! After the ACB, I didn't know what else to do!"

"ACB?" he asked.

She ignored him. "And then you were in the hospital and you didn't want me to —"

"I didn't want you to see me like that!" Jeff interrupted.

"I wanted to… help you, and you kept pushing me away," she continued, scowling. "When you decided to marry Britta without even talking to me, I thought, _well, at this point you've been throwing yourself at this guy for years and years and he doesn't…_ " Annie dug a tissue out of her purse and dabbed her eyes, careful not to disturb her mascara. "And it worked for a while. You were acting out, drinking and refusing to take teaching seriously, but I didn't take the bait. I didn't want to let you have that power over me any more."

Jeff scowled. What power had _he_ ever had over _her_?

"But of course all you had to do was snap your fingers and I came running." Annie sounded a little ashamed of herself. "Still silly little Annie Adderall, full of naive romantic fantasies, no matter how much I tried to deny it. You tell me you want me, after a whole year of… and then we have like ten seconds, and of course I immediately want you to kiss me, because… because I still wanted to kiss you." She closed her eyes and held her head in her hands.

"It was a kiss good-bye," Jeff said slowly. He reached across their table and stroked her forearm, which was all he could reach. "I thought it was a pity kiss."

"No. Yes. I don't know." Annie opened her eyes again and moved to hold his extended hand in hers. "I went in thinking I was okay, I was over you, but… afterwards there was all this emotion I'd buried, and we were hanging out again, before I left. It was just so… I really like hanging out with you, you know?"

"Yeah."

"I missed it a lot. And then we kissed good-bye at the airport and that felt like a real good-bye kiss, the kind of kiss you do when you're going to see someone again and kiss them again when you see them. We were texting, and I was looking forward to seeing you, and I thought you'd beproud of me…" Shamefaced, she took a sip of water, and tried to pull her hand from his.

Jeff didn't let her, however. "Yeah. I've kind of gotten a sense that skipping out on you wasn't the best move, even looked at strictly from a what's-good-for-Annie angle. I'm sorry."

Annie sighed. "I know. And you were freaking out. But you should have talked to me about it. We could have… we could have worked something out. I mean, this is _us_."

"Christ, talking to you about it was the last thing I wanted to do. Just for selfish reasons: you were going to go, and I didn't want your last memory of me being the time you found out that I'm not really the cool guy who doesn't care, that I fake that to keep people at arm's length."

Annie let out a small laugh. "Jeff, I've known you for years. I've always known you aren't really made of diamonds."

"I know, but…" Jeff tried to find the words. His whole life, he'd striven to present a particular image of himself. Over the years that facade had fallen some, most often when he was talking to Abed in confidence, and now he felt it had collapsed completely. But if there was one person he didn't want knowing how small and weak he really was, it was her.

"I know you pretty well," she pointed out. "I found this, didn't I?" Annie pulled her hand from his and retrieved a folded sheet of paper from her purse. Jeff didn't need to look closely to recognize the letter he'd hidden in his apartment before he left.

"Yeah, I guess so." He met her eyes, then looked away. "So you really do carry that around?"

"Uh, yeah." She unfolded the sheet and glanced at it with a soft smile. " 'You're my superhero,' you said. 'All my love,' you said. You think I'm going to throw away the… the closest thing to a love letter anyone ever gave me?"

"I didn't have time to put together anything better," he said quietly, regretting that he hadn't spent six months writing her an opera.

"I knew where to look for it," Annie continued as she carefully refolded the letter and put it away. "That kinda suggests I know you pretty well." Then her smile vanished, and she scowled, remembering something. "Under your bed, where you kept your box of stolen women's underwear."

Jeff glanced around, clearing his throat and hoping no one had overheard that.

"I really wish I didn't know about that." Annie sounded so pained — as much hurt as scornful — Jeff couldn't help but wince.

"It was before I knew you," he said helplessly, "mostly, and it wasn't a sex thing. I mean, yes, obviously, but it was more like, evidence that a woman was once…" He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. "Those weren't the only things in that box —"

"I know. I know!" Annie assured him. "I get it. You're human like the rest of us and you need affirmation sometimes. It's fine."

"Evidently it's not fine," he said tightly. "You know, I care how you see me, obviously, and when you're contemptuous of… if what I did was gross, it was only…" He leaned back in his seat and shook his head, unable to articulate it in a way that didn't make him sound like a loser.

"Oh!" She reached across the table and took his hand, this time. "That's not what I meant. I just… I asked myself, why mementoes of all of those other women, of Britta even, and not… why did you never…"

Her eyes were huge and liquid and words came spilling out of Jeff before he could think about them. "You're not even in that category, that's… that's not you. And I stole that clipping out of the trophy case —"

"I remember," Annie said. She didn't seem mollified. "Is that how you remember me? As the star-struck teenager with the crush on you?"

"As the ruthless gladiator who grabbed me and kissed me to secure victory, you mean?" he asked wryly. "But no. There's so much of you; you cast such a huge shadow that there's no one thing that could ever stand in for it all. The clipping was just… it reminded me of all of the other stuff. I know you as — I remembered you, when I thought I wasn't going to see you again, as this life-changing force. That's why I fell apart when I lost you, because you were — are — so important to me."

"Jeff, you didn't lose me." She smiled, as though he were being silly. " _You_ ran away from _me_ , remember?" The smile was a little forced, he could see; his flight from Colorado was still a sore point.

"Oh, come on," he retorted. "You'd been offered your dream job, or at least a stepping stone towards it. You weren't going to stay at Greendale. You were leaving for DC. Or Boston, apparently."

"That didn't mean we couldn't be friends —"

"Anyway I didn't mean then. I meant last year, when you stopped paying attention to me, and I just collapsed."

She frowned, remembering. In the time between his brief engagement to Britta and her internship, Jeff had tried a number of ways to draw Annie out, and she'd recognized them as such, at the time: he'd blown off teaching, he'd begun drinking more, he'd spent whole weeks sulking in his office. He'd done just about everything he could, short of actually talking to her about it. "Collapsed seems like a strong word."

"No, I think it's the right one." His tone was grim.

"Oh, come on," she protested. "You didn't even bother to try to sit down with me and — I'm not even talking about your wanting to date me." Calling it dating seemed wrong, insufficient, but she couldn't think of a better term. "You could have just said, 'hey Annie, let's hang out sometime in a purely platonic way,' and I would have… well, I would have done something."

"I didn't _want_ to hang out sometime in a purely platonic way. And what else was I going to say? You'd finally gotten over me. You're gorgeous and brilliant and unsinkable, and young. You have everything going for you, and your whole life ahead. And I was old and burned out, stuck in a dead-end job while everybody else was going on to bigger and better things… this is what I was thinking at the time, obviously. Though you are gorgeous and brilliant and unsinkable, that part hasn't changed."

"Oh, God," she said softly, as she realized for the first time how little of his behavior in the last year had been a put-on, an act to try to guilt her into returning to him. "Jeff, I'm so sorry! I knew you were hurting, but I thought you were just pouting, because I wasn't being your adoring girl sidekick any more. I thought you would be fine, you just needed time to get used to it, because it's not like you really needed me…"

"But I did! I needed you." When Jeff saw her face crumple he realized he'd said the wrong thing. "No, it's okay. You needed to do that. I'd treated you so badly for so long, you needed to protect yourself and move on. I understood that. I didn't have the strength to deal with it, but that was on me. You didn't do anything wrong."

"No!" Annie cried, her voice cracking. She shook her head and fought back tears. "I should have done something, I knew you were hurting and what you needed and I didn't say anything, I just let it happen. Someone I love was hurting and I just let it happen!"

"I pushed you away —"

"It's not like I couldn't see what was happening to you! I complained about us not talking about it, but it's me who wasn't talking about it! You were… oh, God!"

Jeff hadn't seen her cry full force since the day of the bunker, when they'd first been told Greendale would be closed and sold. She was still holding one of his hands; he covered hers with his other hand. "It's okay. It's over. And it was my fault," he said urgently. "I was an ass. And I wasn't honest, with you or with myself, for so long… It was my fault we weren't talking."

Annie regained her composure enough to wipe her eyes. "Well, we're talking now."

"Yes, exactly." Jeff gave her hand what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

"And you've been honest lately." She took a large sip of water and a deep breath. "You called me. I didn't call you. I knew you were here and I didn't call you, but you called me the minute you saw me." She gave a bitter little laugh.

"I did. I was so happy to see you," he said, chuckling along with her.

"You called me and then you asked me out."

"Which you didn't seem to like."

"Well," and now her shoulders were still tensed but she wore a nervous smile, "it was a lot to take in."

* * *

After dinner it was almost ten, and by wordless consensus they went upstairs. Obviously Annie was going to proceed home, to sleep alone in her own bed, but there was no reason she couldn't see his place. Plus they'd gotten sidetracked, talking about Borchert and Pierce, and never really gotten around to discussing the bizarre videos they'd found. Jeff had every intention of calling her a cab or an Uber and putting her in it and even paying for it. It was an expense he could manage without even noticing, that he correctly guessed would have been a substantial hardship for her.

"Oh, wow," she said, when she walked into his apartment.

Jeff smiled at that. One bedroom, furnished, nine stories up with a view of the water. Decorated tastefully, if neutrally. The cost was substantially more than he would have liked to spend, especially without building up any equity, but the rental agreement was month-to-month, so as a short-term solution, it had its appeal. On some level he'd taken it with an eye towards impressing her, in that part of himself that had remained hopeful she would appear and bang down his door and drag him back to her. And he hadn't been sure, when he took it, exactly what his plan was long-term; he'd just needed to get out of Mark's spare room.

"Wow." Annie couldn't help but compare this to the extremely clean squalor she and Vicki lived in. The furniture hadn't been picked up from the side of the road, and it matched. The paint hadn't been patchily applied by former tenants to cover scratches and stains. The view was something she wanted to look at, not just a partially obscured view of a neighbor's driveway. The washing machine and dryer were in the building, somewhere, she thought, not at a coin-op laundromat two blocks away.

"I know, I know," Jeff said with feigned chagrin. "Very short-term corporate housing. But there's a fitness center in the building, maid service, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time shopping for furniture. Really it was the most practical option."

"I bet," Annie said. She was drawn as if magnetically to the big bay windows that looked out on the harbor.

"That view is better during the day."

"I'll have to come back sometime, then." Annie stared down at the night view of the water. "So this was practical. Nothing to do with splurging on luxuries after the years in Greendale?"

"Of course not," he said airily. "I was just thinking, I got it to impress you."

She turned and glanced at him. "I thought you said you didn't know I was —"

"I didn't!" Jeff busied himself at his sideboard, pouring a couple of scotches. One for her and a double for himself. "I thought I'd see you in a few years, though. And when I did, I wanted you to see that once I'd gotten free of Greendale I had, in fact, become a successful grown-up."

"Huh." She seemed amused by this. "Well, you could have gotten something cheaper now, and only moved into the place with the solid gold bathroom fixtures after you'd decided to bite the bullet and call me."

"First off, the bathroom fixtures are only gold plate," he countered. "Secondly, I didn't know when we'd meet again, and given that you're here now, I think my plan was entirely prudent."

"You don't have to go to all this trouble to impress me," Annie said, in a tone that suggested she didn't quite buy the notion that he'd rented a luxury apartment downtown for her sake, but she didn't want to debate that point. "I'm a pretty easy sell on being impressed by Jeff Winger."

He tried not to smirk too much — just enough — as he offered her one of the drinks in his hand. "That's how I know you have good taste."

"Mmm." She accepted the scotch — single-malt speyside, neat — and took a careful sip, not breaking eye contact. "How long do you plan to stay here?"

"In Boston?" Jeff took a swig of his own drink. "Indefinitely. My skillset is fairly portable, and with a few years at Biddle Heath on my resume I'll have more options, but… at the moment… given that you're here, too… there's nowhere I'd rather be."

She smiled a little at that. "In this apartment."

"In this apartment…" Jeff trailed off, trying to come up with a way to say _only until you and I buy a house together_ that wasn't unbearably inappropriate. After a moment he gave up. "I'm not sure." Jeff dismissed the idea of hinting that maybe he needed a roommate before he'd even fully conceived the notion. He'd accepted in his heart that he wanted a long-term relationship with Annie, the kind where they had a mortgage together and a living room full of purple cushions and baby toys, but there was a big difference between wanting that and having a solid action plan for achieving it…

Annie looked up at him, eyes slightly wide, and he wondered, suddenly, how much of what he'd been thinking had come through in his tone and body language. Then her free hand was on his chest, and he was looming over her with his free hand sliding down her back, and the whole rest of the world faded out and vanished, no longer needed.

How long they stood like that, just staring at one another and feeling the warmth of their bodies, basking in the moment, he wasn't sure and it didn't matter. At some point they transitioned into kissing, and it was less a thing that started and stopped than a thing that ebbed and flowed. Afterwards they were pressed up against one of those bay windows, and the scotches were on the little black table some professional decorator had placed in a convenient spot. He had her pinned up against the window, and they were both slightly out of breath, as though they'd been running. Jeff felt like he was still running, chasing her down a steep hill, in no position to stop if he wanted to, and with no desire but for her.

"I want to confess something," Annie said, as she stared up at him. _ACB_ , she thought. _He deserves to know_. "You remember the ass-crack bandit."

Jeff nodded slightly, fighting a grin, because he knew exactly what she was going to say.

She assumed, reasonably, that his ill-concealed enthusiasm was due to the kissing and the touching. "You didn't care about it, you said, and I tried to convince you to investigate the bandit with me, but you didn't think it was important—"

"I think we both knew that I was going to do it," Jeff said.

Annie wasn't so sure. "Maybe," she said. "But I wasn't going to take that chance. I thought, if you and I — if we were doing something together… I'd hardly seen you since you graduated, and it was so good to be around you again…" She puckered her lips slightly, embarrassed, and her gaze slid down toward his chest.

Jeff smiled. "You were the one who cracked Troy."

She looked up and pulled back, a shocked expression on her face. "What? I didn't — I mean, yes. I cracked Troy, and I set up the fake phone call — I didn't do any of the other… how did you…?"

"Please," he said with a smirk. "I knew all along."

Jeff looked at her, and she looked at him, and slowly her eyes narrowed. "You didn't!" she cried, lightly swatting him on the chest, then leaving her hand there.

"Okay, no, I didn't," he admitted. "You kind of let it slip the night you announced your internship."

"I didn't! Did I?" Annie bit her lip, trying to remember.

"I took it as a positive sign," Jeff assured her. "That night I was really looking for a positive sign."

" _That_ I remember," she said, stroking his chest. "Then I told you to kiss me."

"You did, yeah."

"Was that positive enough for you?" Annie leaned forward slightly, chin tilted up, her eyes all mock-serious.

"I think so," Jeff said. He stroked her cheek with the hand that wasn't already on the back of her neck.

"Kiss me again," she demanded, and he did, against the window looking east out towards the sea.

In that moment the sun could have come up nine hours early and neither of them would have noticed.


	24. I'm Just Amazed

Jeff normally slept substantially later than Annie, but normally he slept alone, so one change becoming two changes wasn't such a big deal. The fact of the matter was that the events of the night before were too much for him to think about; they needed to be cut up into a bunch of little things. Things he was equipped to handle: Annie in his apartment, Annie in his bed, Annie still there when he woke up in the middle of the night and groped for her, Annie still there early in the morning when her phone started screeching an alarm.

Annie the night before writhing in his arms. Annie laughing with embarrassment when they'd realized the only condom in the apartment was the one in her purse that, it turned out, had expired in 2013. Annie agreeing that they could make do. Annie with his hands and mouth on her. Annie with her hands and mouth on him.

When her phone went off she'd jerked awake. He was pretty sure they'd both been semiconscious at that point, her back pressed up against his front, his left arm holding her while his right was tucked under her pillow. Jeff had shifted into that position sometime in the night, and she'd let out a little satisfied hum that ensured he wanted nothing in the world more than to hold her. Then the alarm, and an ecstasy of fumbling, and the sound of her laughter and her hair in his face and then she was scampering off to the bathroom, promising to return soon.

He lay back and waited for her.

 _So that happened._ Imaginary Annie was perched impossibly on the narrow ledge formed by the top of a framed picture of a seagull, placed by whoever decorated the apartment. _That is a thing that happened._

Jeff scowled. He'd hoped he was done with the slightly contemptuous, slightly patronizing specter of Annie that had haunted him for weeks. He had Actual Annie; he didn't need Imaginary Annie to tell him what she wasn't there to say.

 _But I can tell you what she's too_ polite _to say._

That wasn't her, Jeff reminded himself. Annie was many things, but she had never been too polite to tell him ugly truths. She might couch them with careful language, or she might carelessly let them drop, not recognizing how badly they would affect him, but she wouldn't keep silent for his sake or for anyone's.

 _Are you sure? How can you be sure? When have the two of you been in this situation before?_

He knew her, though. He knew her better than he knew anyone, in some respects. He knew that if staying the night with him hadn't been an opportunity she relished, she would have signaled that. She would have transitioned away, said something, done something besides assist him in removing their clothing and leaping onto his bed.

 _Maybe you're right. In fact I hope you are._ Imaginary Annie shook her head sadly as she looked down at him. _But maybe right now she's in there running the water so you can't hear her crying —_

The door to the bathroom opened and she emerged. To Jeff's eyes she was practically glowing, and he had to repress the urge to stick his tongue out at Imaginary Annie — Actual Annie wouldn't have understood the gesture.

"Good morning," Annie said with a shy smile that belied how much of one another's bodies they'd explored the night before.

"Good morning," he replied, with an equally shy smile.

"Oh!" Annie saw something that made her light up. She crossed the room and bent over his nightstand. "You really do have a picture of me next to your bed!"

"Well, yeah," Jeff replied. "I mean, everyone should. In fact I suppose everyone will, someday. Like with Mao's little red book. Pictures of the Empress will be everywhere."

She laughed, delightedly, and then again when she saw the clipping he'd taken from Britta who had stolen it on Annie's orders from Jeff's office at Greendale, where he'd put it after he stole it from the school's trophy display case.

"Come back to bed," Jeff suggested, because it was the thing he wanted most.

"Oh, I've got to get to work," she said regretfully. "Thanks, though. I should go," she continued, as she picked up her pants from the floor.

"Hey, no rush," he said. "We're a ten-minute walk from your office, not forty-five minutes of bus and the T."

"Yeah…" Annie's tone indicated she'd already thought of this. "But I need to stop by a drug store and get some stuff, I mean, I didn't exactly pack for this, and I can go in with these clothes but if I don't clean myself up some, then…" She trailed off, distracted by the way he was looking at her. "What?"

"I'm just amazed that you're standing in my room in a camisole, and I'm sitting here in my underwear, and… I'm just amazed."

"Well, thank you for that," she said, and gave a little anxious bow that was all the more adorable for her obvious ignorance of how adorable it was.

"All right, then," he said. "Let me grab some pants and I'll walk you out."

* * *

It was cold and gray in downtown Boston, but to Jeff and Annie the world sang. He walked her to the nearest drug store, where he insisted on paying for her lip gloss and hair ties, then a coffee shop where he bought her a small americano with an extra espresso shot and a soy latte for himself, and he probably would have walked her to her desk and sat and stared at her for hours, if she'd let him — and she was tempted to let him. He wanted to make plans to take her to lunch, but she explained she usually ate at her desk and she was already feeling a little guilty for letting him buy her coffee after letting him buy her dinner the night before, and then he wanted to make a plan to take her to dinner again, but she pointed out that she hadn't been home since yesterday morning and he relented. She briefly considered trying to construct a plan that would allow her to shower, change, do laundry, wash dishes, make and eat a dinner out of the perishable ingredients she'd bought, and still see him late that night, but a third consecutive night with him might have been too much of a good thing — she was, when she stopped to think about it, exhausted. And it would be easier to relent and make a plan with him than to cancel plans already made. So instead she demurred and he didn't press her, in case this thing between them was too delicate to withstand the stress of his overeager regard.

* * *

His workday started considerably later than hers, so he had time to go back to his apartment, change, exercise, shower, and change again, and still arrive at his office a few minutes earlier than usual.

TO: [William Stone x]

CC:

BCC:

SUBJECT: Interslice document dump

Thu, 1 Oct 2015 at 9:46 am

Are you going to be in the office today? There's something in the materials from the document dump: Interslice's parent company's parent company's parent company's sole stockholder and Laser Lotus's majority shareholder's parent company's parent company's parent company have the same TEX-ID number.

TO: [Jeffrey Winger x]

CC:

BCC: [mrx1943 x]

SUBJECT: Re: Interslice document dump

Thu, 1 Oct 2015 at 9:53 am

Are you sure? That sounds like a transcription error. I'll be in meetings most of the day but will try to check email.

TO: [William Stone x]

CC:

BCC:

SUBJECT: Re: Interslice document dump

Thu, 1 Oct 2015 at 9:59 am

I also have some questions about the contents of some VHS tapes.

TO: [Jeffrey Winger x]

CC:

BCC: [mrx1943 x]

SUBECT: Re: Interslice document dump

Thu, 1 Oct 2015 at 10:07 am

20 min out, don't do anything until I get there!

* * *

Jeff sat in his office and stared at the stack of VHS tapes like he was worried they'd grow legs and run off, or maybe like he thought they were going to lay golden eggs. At about quarter past ten, one of the paralegals stuck her head in.

"Excuse me, Jeff? I just got a call from Will?" Andrea's voice wavered slightly; this wasn't the sort of interaction she usually had with the attorneys. "He asked me to make sure you don't go anywhere?"

"Sounds right." Jeff sipped his coffee.

"Are going to talk to him, or…?"

"Yeah, definitely. As soon as he gets here."

"Okay then." Andrea chuckled nervously. "If he asks I stopped you from going anywhere, okay?"

"Sure." Jeff never took his eyes off the tapes.

Andrea tilted her head, noticing the stack. "Are those from Will's office?"

He didn't immediately respond.

"Because he also asked me to grab the tapes from his office? And stick them in my desk?"

"It's okay," Jeff assured her, the cocky grin that wouldn't leave his face this morning still present. "I'll just hold onto these until Will gets here."

"Okay…" Her glum expression suggested she predicted Stone wouldn't be satisfied with this outcome, and blame her.

"I'll tell him you tried to wrestle them away from me and I was a real jerk about it," he offered.

She smiled politely but he could tell she wasn't actually mollified. "Thanks."

"It'll be fine, I promise," Jeff told Andrea. He didn't have anything against Andrea; she didn't deserve to be terrorized by Pierce's agent.

Slightly reassured, she nodded before backing out of the doorway.

It was another ten minutes — two games of _Fruit Ninja_ and an investigation into whether it was possible to have flowers delivered to Annie at her desk before her lunchtime — before Stone appeared at his door.

"Knock knock," he said, rapping the doorframe as he entered.

"Morning, Will." Jeff put his phone away with the florist's order form only partially filled out.

"Mind if I…?" Stone barely paused before closing Jeff's office door behind him. Once it latched shut, he sagged against the door, resting his forehead against the smooth wood and leaning heavily on the knob.

"You all right, Will?"

"Oh my God!" Stone let out a theatrical sigh and flung himself into one of Jeff's chairs. "You have no idea how exhausting this is. I've barely slept in weeks."

"How exhausting what is?"

"I'm surprised Mark isn't in here," Stone said as he lolled his head back. "You two are pals, right?"

"This has nothing to do with Mark," Jeff said with a firmness he hoped Stone would respect and believe.

"Don't worry, don't worry, it's not like I could fire him if I wanted to, he's a partner same as me. I could fire you, if I really wanted to, but Mark's safe. Not that I want to fire you! I'm just saying, Mark's as much my boss as I am his. Which is to say, neither of us are anyone's bosses. Except you and the other non-equity partners and the associates and the paralegals and the LAAs. But none of you count."

Jeff emitted a low chuckle. "Last week you said the client was the boss."

"Some clients are more demanding than others. You know what I mean." Stone rolled his eyes so dramatically he nearly fell from his chair.

"I think I do, yeah."

"So what do you want? Do you want to go back to Delaware?" Stone looked up, hopeful. "Because that would really solve a lot of problems for me, if you were willing to go back to Delaware. We could get you a nice apartment and everything."

Jeff stroked his chin. "Why Delaware?"

"It's boring and full of other lawyers, I guess?" Stone made a face. "And the actual chancery court. It's not that hard to come up with a pretext for sending you there. Liaison with the actual corporate litigation attorneys. Negotiate with the other side —"

"What other side?"

"Are you trying to be funny?" Stone asked as he rose.

"I don't know, maybe. Do you think this is a laughing matter?" Jeff responded.

"Where's your booze? Let's have a drink and talk this out."

Jeff raised his eyebrows. "I'm amazed to hear myself saying this, but it's not even eleven o'clock."

Stone made a drinky-drinky motion with his hand.

Jeff chuckled. "I'd say I don't keep liquor in my office, but I think we'd both just be demeaned by the pretense." He opened one of his desk drawers and retrieved a small unopened bottle of blue label whisky. "This is for a special occasion. Have to get glasses from the conference room."

Stone ducked out of the office for a moment and returned with two glasses, and Mark.

"What are you guys toasting?" Mark asked excitedly. "Did Jeff get engaged?"

"That's not how relationships work—" Stone interjected.

Mark shook his head. "When you're with the right person—"

"Will here was about to tell me all the dirty secrets of the Black Hand," Jeff declared.

"Okay, well, obviously I want in," Mark said.

"Are you prepared to swear a blood oath to keep the secrets of the order, and to be damned if you swear falsely?" Stone asked.

Mark squinted at them. "Yeah… yes, definitely. Let me grab a glass."

While Mark was out of the room, Jeff poured himself and Stone each a shot of the blue label whisky. As he offered Stone a glass, Jeff cleared his throat expectantly.

"We should wait for Mark," Stone said, before he downed the shot. He held out his hand for the bottle. "Gimme."

"Should I bill Laser Lotus for the liquor?" Jeff asked as he handed Stone the whisky.

As Stone poured himself several shots' worth of Jeff's best whisky, Mark returned, glass in hand. "Oh, good, I was afraid you'd started without me."

"Never," Stone assured him as he handed Mark the bottle.

Mark carefully splashed an ounce or so of the liquor into his glass. "All right, cheers!" he cried, holding the glass up.

Jeff obligingly clinked his glass against Mark's, but Stone merely raised his, before drinking it in a draught.

"Whew." Stone sighed. "Okay. Let's talk about this."

Mark shot Jeff a baffled look, and Jeff shrugged back at him, before they both took measured sips of their drinks (though Jeff's measured sip turned into drinking the entire shot halfway through).

"I assume this is about your being in closed-door off-site meetings with the Laser Lotus client all week," Mark began.

"Yeah. No. Not like you probably think." Stone sat down in one of the chairs. As Jeff and Mark followed suit, he spoke again. "Let's say you have a client who's old and weird and has a lot of terrible ideas you have to advise him on."

"You just described most of my old practice in Colorado," said Mark.

"You mean Pierce," Jeff said.

Stone winced at the name. "I didn't say that. You said that. I'm talking about a hypothetical situation. You have this weird old client, and he has crazy plans for his estate, and how he wants to spend his money before he goes. Some of these plans involve skirting some laws. Mostly tax laws, not exclusively. So what do you do?"

"I advise my client to follow the letter of the law, to the best of my ability, and I don't participate in any wrongdoing," Mark said promptly.

"What he said," said Jeff. "Come on, Will."

"Okay, well, what do you do if you aren't being quizzed by an ethics examiner, if it's actually happening?"

Mark frowned. "Same thing but maybe I'm a little more open to pursuing loopholes?"

"Come on, Will," Jeff said again.

"Yeah, yeah, okay. So you do your best, right?" Will made a gesture like he was throwing clay onto a potter's wheel, which presumably represented his best. "And maybe your guy gets it in his head that no matter how good his will is, there's always going to be a way to challenge it, or for the government to break his trusts and seize all his heirs' new assets in inheritance taxes, or something else could go catastrophically wrong. So he gets a terrible idea."

"He fakes his death," Jeff said.

"What? No!" cried Mark. "That's ridiculous!"

"He fakes his death," Stone agreed, as though Mark hadn't spoken. "He comes up with a way to convince anyone who thinks about it for half a second that he didn't fake his death—"

"Embarrassing cause of death," Jeff said.

"No," said Mark. "No. Because this guy is egotistical enough to think he needs to be around to mastermind executing his own estate. He isn't going to turn around and deliberately give himself a ludicrous, shameful, silly cause of death… we are talking about Pierce Hawthorne here, right?"

Jeff and Stone nodded.

" 'Here Lies Pierce Hawthorne, Crushed Under a Battleship He Single-Handedly Lifted Out of the Sea to Save a Colony of Trapped Endangered Dolphins,' " Mark recited. "Or he was setting a new land speed record and his car exploded. Or he was in an orgy giving pleasure to three different women simultaneously, and as they all had mondo orgasms around him his heart seized and he died instantly."

"Did you know Pierce?" Jeff asked.

"Just your stories," Mark said with a shake of his head. "I listen when you talk, chief."

"What you're saying may be true. But in this hypothetical he's got you advising him," Stone reminded Mark. "You've got to advise him to the best of your ability—"

"The best of my ability is cautioning him against engaging in farce! It's not telling him what the best kind of farce to engage in is!"

"Yeah, well," Stone grew defensive, then sighed. "Maybe some mistakes were made."

"Maybe," Jeff said, straining to remain diplomatic. "But this isn't all hypothetical fun and games. Real people are affected."

Stone wiped at his face with a limp hand. "I told him not to bring you here, but he was all, no, no, Jeffrey's my best friend, I miss him, it'll be fun, we can play cards and watch cowboy movies."

"What do you mean? He didn't bring me here…" Jeff frowned.

"He arranged for Mark, here, to get an exceptionally generous job offer when the opportunity arose, and similarly for Mark to be in a position to make you a likewise generous offer…"

"You mean you didn't recruit me because you think I'm awesome?" Mark asked, disappointed.

"It's cool, man; you're fairly awesome," Stone assured him. He turned back to Jeff. "You and Annie Edison—"

"Yeah? What about me and Annie Edison?"

"It was inevitable you two would meet up, get together." Stone grimaced. "It'd take a crane to tear that apart."

"I could have told you that," Mark observed. "I did, actually, more than once. You were in the tank for that girl," he told Jeff. "Still are."

"Why do you have an opinion about me and Annie?" Jeff asked Stone, irritated that the man knew so much about his personal life. "Are you just operating off what Pierce told you? Because it's Pierce; you have to know he'll twist facts to support whatever… I mean, come on!"

"You're the one who keeps claiming Pierce Hawthorne faked his death and has been living in hiding ever since," Stone countered. "I didn't say that at all."

"And why would Pierce even think that? It's ridiculous!"

Stone rolled his eyes and ignored the question. "One day your hypothetical client comes to you and says he's made up his mind; he's going to do it. He's going to cut his fortune into pieces and give one chunk to one of his surrogate children and another much bigger chunk to a different one of his surrogate children and a third chunk as a small token so that Abed doesn't feel left out. Or maybe his name isn't Abed." Stone picked up the whisky and poured himself another drink from the now half-full bottle. "Any resemblance to persons living or death — dead, I mean, is purely coincidental."

"I think we're getting off-track," Jeff said. "You were telling us how you helped Pierce fake his death and spend I don't know how much money jerking Annie around. And me. A fake shareholder lawsuit can't be cheap."

Mark eyed the tumbler in Stone's hand and glanced at the one in his own, from which he'd taken only a single sip. "Also Will is drinking a surprising amount of scotch for midmorning."

"I'm a professional. Don't try this at home," Stone warned them, as he threw back another swallow of whisky.

"So he says he wants to divvy up his money and he wants to see them enjoy it. He comes up with this stupid plan and you do it, because that's what you do. You do what he pays you to do. You give the one kid the first tranche of money, and then he sits back to watch the other kid get the second tranche of money. He's thrown together this whole complicated thing that has a zillion different failure points, but that's why he isn't dead, so he can oversee it and make sure it all goes smoothly, right?. Then the other kid doesn't leave Greendale to start her life. That's the first step in the plan, because he wants her to make her own start. Instead she just idles for a year. He gets antsy. You have to talk him out of exposing himself to her — not like that!" Stone snapped. "Come on. Get your heads in the game."

"Pierce got her the internship?" Jeff asked.

Stone shrugged and took another drink. "He has you write an unsolicited testimonial and letter of recommendation. I dunno if it makes a difference. She goes, she does the thing. You're ready to approach her and play the tape and do the thing, but he stops you, he says wait until after. Then she's offered a permanent position in the same city that you and he are in. Suspicious, right?"

"Very."

"He says he had nothing to do with it, and I mean, how could he? What would that even look like?" Stone rubbed his eyes. "Fugitives don't usually have contacts inside the FBI—"

"Whitey Bulger did," suggested Mark.

"Pierce is no Whitey Bulger," Jeff declared. "It's got to be a coincidence. Annie got hired on her own merits. She's a driven, dedicated genius who overcame levels of adversity that would have crushed most people without letting it dampen her irrepressibly positive attitude. Anyone who would hurt her or stand in her way is a monster."

"Ooh, you should get her flowers and write that on the card!" Mark looked pleased with himself. "It's a nice sentiment."

"He's a fugitive, is the thing, with… where was I?" Stone looked confused — the whisky was kicking in quickly.

"Halfway through my scotch," Jeff told him. "Annie accepted the position in the Boston field office. She moved here. Her roommate is another Greendale alum—"

"Victoria Jenkins." Stone nodded dismissively. "He's not a fan."

"Who is?" Jeff pressed on. "After Annie had been here for weeks you called her out of the blue. Why?"

"Maybe someone was getting antsy." Stone reached for the whisky bottle again, but changed his mind and let his hand drop halfway through the motion. "Maybe someone had thought she would be doing better for herself by then, that 'once she's gotten out of Greendale and gotten herself established' was a higher standard than he realized. Expectations mismatch. Loss of nerve, fear that he'd die for real without actually carrying the plan out, all that stuff."

Jeff cleared his throat. "So last week you send me out of town —"

"You know, he missed you?" Stone interjected. "Misses you. You were great friends, to hear him tell it."

"Aw, good for you, buddy!" Mark cooed, patting Jeff on the back. "He doesn't make friends easily," he explained to Stone.

"Thanks, Cash," Jeff said tightly.

"He wanted to wait until you'd settled in, then reveal himself. That part of the plan predates her getting the job here. Kind of got put on hold… so yeah, he sent you to Delaware to get you out of the way." Stone scowled, like he was debating whether or not to reveal some additional tidbit.

"What?"

Stone shook his head. "Never mind. He had me call her and play her the first tape and then lie to her a bunch. When he came up with the plan, she was supposed to search my office in secret immediately, and find the other tapes…"

"She was supposed to find the other tapes?"

"Obviously. Why else would I have them here? But Pierce — I mean, the hypothetical client in this hypothetical…"

"You can just say Pierce, at this point," Mark told him. "Saying 'hypothetical' a bunch wouldn't make a difference to an ethics panel."

"Pierce hadn't really thought about the combination of your working at his lawyer's office — by his lawyer I mean me — and Annie being expected to sneak around with a flashlight after dark. She doesn't seem like the sneak-around type to me, you know, but he insisted…"

"If I hadn't been here, probably, yeah," Jeff said with a sigh.

"She does seem like a real spitfire," Mark observed.

"So now what? Is this all another layer of lies?" Jeff asked Stone.

"Of course not," Stone said. "I mean, come on, I'm drinking here. This is honesty. I've been hammering Pierce for days, trying to convince him that the whole treasure hunt plan isn't workable. Finally he agreed to bring you in on it, when I told him you knew about the tapes. I don't know what he was thinking before."

Jeff shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. When Stone had been adamantly denying that Pierce was alive, Jeff had been certain of it. But now that Stone had shifted so easily into the opposite position, Jeff felt himself doubting he'd penetrated to the deepest layer of the onion so easily. Stone could still be playing him… "Is Pierce willing to meet with me?" he asked. If he could get face to face with Pierce, Jeff was confident he could work out whether things were still being hidden from him. Jeff knew all Pierce's tells.

Stone stretched his shoulders and yawned. "Yeah, yeah. I told him you'd want to talk to him. He's willing to sit down with you today, out at his house. I'll call him, let him know. Or hell…" Stone took out his phone and fiddled with it for a moment, then set it down on Jeff's desk where it began emitting rings, in speaker mode.

Someone picked up on the fourth ring. "Mmm'yello?" The voice was familiar…

"Hey Pierce," Stone said loudly. "Been talking to Jeff, like I said."

"How'd it go? He suspect anything?" _Definitely Pierce_ , Jeff thought, then called out "Hi, Pierce."

"Jeff!" Pierce sounded surprised and delighted. "How are you? Or how's Annie, if that's what I should be asking…"

"Both pretty fine, Pierce." A thought struck Jeff, a memory of him and Annie in Craig's office, listening to a phone call… "Pierce, can you do me a favor and hum a few bars of Paul Simon?"

"What?" Pierce sounded baffled.

" _Bridge Over Troubled Water, Graceland,_ whatever," Jeff said.

"Why?"

"So I know you're not a recording!"

"I'm not a recording! Gibble gabble woozle wozzle, is that something a recording would say?"

"Maybe!" In his suspicions Jeff envisioned a sort of mixing board, with dozens of prerecorded phrases being spooled out for his benefit.

"Okay, fine. 'Man walks down the street, it's a street in a strange world, maybe it's the third world, maybe it's his first time around…'" As Pierce sang, Jeff felt his suspicions fade. He was slightly off-key, but it was recognizable.

At least it was recognizable to Jeff. "What is that?" Mark whispered. The confused expression didn't leave his face until Pierce hit the bridge.

"You satisfied?" Pierce asked after he'd run through the chorus a couple of times.

"Do something by the Stones," Jeff demanded.

"No! I'm not your damn jukebox, Jeffrey, I'm not going to sing 'Sympathy for the Devil' for you!"

"All right, all right. I'm satisfied. Congratulations on faking your death."

"Thank you," Pierce said, a little stiffly. Then he chuckled. "So how've you liked working for me?"

"It's been full of surprises," Jeff replied. "Will said you were talking about a face-to-face meeting…"

"Of course! Come on out here, we'll get some lunch. Will knows the way."

"I'll drive," Mark said. "You just downed half a bottle of scotch," he reminded Stone.

"What's that?" Pierce called. "Who's speaking? Jeffrey, are you drunk? Did you learn nothing from your hospital experience?"

"We'll be over as soon as we can, Pierce," Jeff said.

"Great, great. We'll talk more then. Talking on speaker always makes me hoarse, you've got to raise your voice a little —"

"You don't have to be on speaker on your end," Stone said. "We've gone over that."

"Whatever," groused Pierce. "Hurry up and get over here!" He hung up.

"Okay, so, apparently we're going to go Pierce's house now," Stone announced. He rose unsteadily to his feet.

Jeff exchanged a sidelong glance with Mark. "You know I'm going to tell Annie all of this, right?" he asked Stone. Mark nodded in support.

"Yeah, maybe you don't want to do that," Stone said. "I'll explain in the car."


	25. Probably We Should Talk About It

Annie made it to lunchtime without keeling over, but the giddiness that she'd felt since she woke up that morning refused to leave her. One of her supervisors, David, stopped by her desk at one point to thank her for staying late the night before to finish the reimbursement forms. He probably didn't notice she was wearing the same thing as yesterday, but if he did she hoped he assumed it had more to do with her working late, than with her having slept in a bed not her own. David let her know that there was some kind of office lunch outing planned, a regular first-day-of-the-new-quarter event.

And so, though she'd hoped for a little quiet, instead lunchtime found Annie in the center of a dozen of her work colleagues. She felt herself redden a bit when she discovered that the venue for this group lunch was the same Union Oyster House she'd begged off on the night before, but unlike her dinner with Jeff, Annie didn't think she could convince the whole crew to change restaurants.

Once seated inside (the group was split among three tables, in a dining area up two flights of stairs from the street) Annie ordered a chicken sandwich and a water and smiled politely as the people around her variously joked or complained. Shortly before their food came, David cleared his throat and gave a very short speech declaring the previous quarter a string of triumphs, predicting another string of triumphs for the next quarter, and in particular welcoming Annie, who'd just joined them but had already made herself indispensable.

She reddened again at that, and then everyone was looking at her and Diane (who had twenty years of seniority on Annie but seemed to do pretty much the same job) made a joke about her having worked late the night before to deal with the glut of paperwork and she was even wearing the same clothes as yesterday and didn't she know that she was a federal employee, working late was for the private sector? Everyone laughed, but Annie fretted that her private life, which was no one else's business, might get out somehow. And she definitely didn't want to field any questions about Jeff and what exactly he was to her and she was to him, so she felt she had to change the topic quickly.

So she started talking about Pierce, and his weird funeral and his weirder bequest, and the tiara he left her. When she got to the part where she was watching Pierce on a VHS tape at a law office, people started interrupting her with questions, and that led to a lot more explanation, and frankly she was very slightly peeved that no one seemed to think it odd that she, Annie Edison, Girl Most Likely to Succeed, had graduated from community college instead of Harvard or Yale.

Did Pierce Hawthorne actually have that much money?

"I don't know," Annie said with a shrug. "First he said in his will that he was leaving it all to Troy, and then in the tape he said there was another will and there was more money he wanted me to inherit, and back when he was… when we were in classes together, he said he'd been forced out of Hawthorne Wipes and kind of suggested he'd lost a lot of his fortune on bad investments. He seemed like someone who might have made bad investments."

Had Troy collected the promised inheritance? How much of it was taxed, and how much sheltered?

"I got an email from him the other day," Annie answered. "A few weeks ago, actually, congratulating me on moving here and the new job. He inherited some amount of money, enough that he thinks he's a rich person. Troy's out on the West Coast now, with Abed. I don't know exactly how much money he ended up with."

Was she going to follow the clues and find the treasure?

"Hah, sure. If there were clues." Annie recalled watching the videos the night before, and considered describing them, but then she'd have to explain how she found the videos and about Jeff and why she was probably-illegally poking around in Will Stone's office… "But the treasure hunt wasn't ever completed. So the puzzles have no solution."

Was there actually a treasure to be found?

"I don't know. Maybe? His lawyer said there was some kind of prize, but he also said it wasn't possible to collect it. Or at least he implied that." Annie debated bringing up Pierce's father's bequest, with the elaborate video game, but decided against it.

There might have been other questions, except at that point the waiter came by with dessert menus and everyone started arguing about whether they would, collectively, have dessert or not.

* * *

Annie didn't dwell on her impromptu lunchtime lecture on Pierce Hawthorne, Former Possible Platonic Sugar Daddy; she was much more focused on the night before, and Jeff, and defining their relationship, or lack thereof… So she wasn't expecting it, when David stopped by her desk with a printout.

"This was your friend, right?" He fanned the papers in front of her. "Piercinald Anastasia Hawthorne?"

"Yeah."

"His name was Piercinald?"

"Yeah." Annie examined the papers in his hands. "What's this?"

"Report out of the Denver office. Did you know Hawthorne's death was under investigation?"

She looked up in shock. "What? Why? I thought he died…" Annie didn't want to say the word, especially not to her boss, "by accident."

"Oh, I'm sure," he said breezily, pulling the report back towards him. "But there were some questions. It's still open, technically. When he died, he was in the middle of an IRS audit. Then a bunch of his accounts were mysteriously cleaned out and the money never recovered, and his will specified no autopsy or embalming for religious reasons."

"Pierce wasn't embalmed?" This was news to Annie. She'd known about the lack of autopsy, but it hadn't concerned her — despite what forensic dramas suggested, they were performed on only about ten percent of cadavers.

"Nah. Did the Denver office never contact you for an interview?" David flipped through the report. "Kind of surprising. Lot of loose ends that didn't get followed up on, it looks like."

"Who's the agent in charge?" Annie asked, reaching for the report. "Should I call them?"

"Don't worry about it," he assured her. "You're on the list of potential contacts, so if they didn't talk to you they figured it wasn't worth the trouble."

"Do they think he's still alive?"

David glanced up, surprised. "What?"

"Maybe he faked his death?"

He snorted. "The operating theory was that his accountant was embezzling from him and pulled some tricks to cover it up, although no charges were filed. Certainly nothing about his death being faked."

Annie hummed, unsure how to process this.

"Nothing about a treasure hunt, either," he continued with a shrug. "I thought you might find it interesting."

"Yeah, thanks." Annie hesitated. "Could I get a copy of that report?"

"Uh…" David looked uncomfortable. "Really shouldn't, but…"

"Oh, that's okay," she said, not wanting to rock the boat.

"No, no, it's fine," he said. "Here." He handed her the sheaf of papers, with the barest moment's hesitation. "Just shred it when you're done, all right?"

"Of course." Annie was pretty sure that her supervisor had just committed a felony, technically, so she appreciated the gesture. "Thanks."

* * *

Annie had just run an errand and gotten home and eaten and finished surveying her laundry situation (not great but not terrible) when Jeff texted.

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1920:**

 **How's it going?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1922:**

 **Ok [heart emoji]**

* * *

She started to type I got Pierce's FBI file today but it occurred to her that maybe it would be better not to commit that to a text. She wouldn't want to get David in trouble somehow. He'd said to shred it when she was done with it, and she fully intended to do that — she just wasn't done with it yet and wouldn't be until she showed it to Jeff. Jeff was her lawyer, right? He was a lawyer and he was hers (!?) so clearly their communications were subject to attorney-client privilege… Annie decided to wait until they were together to tell him about it. Then she started to type we need to talk but as she looked at it she decided that would be a bad choice.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1923:**

 **Let's get together soon**

* * *

Not much better, but if she spent an hour trying to compose the perfect text she'd never get anywhere.

* * *

Jeff sat in his apartment with a glass of scotch and his feet up and stared at his phone. " 'I can be over in twenty minutes,' " he said aloud.

 _Too pushy_ , Imaginary Annie told him. She was curled up next to him on his sofa, her feet tucked under her and her head resting on his shoulder. _I need space after the last couple of days._

"I don't trust you any more. Not that I ever believed you," Jeff told the figment of his imagination.

 _I'm not just all your insecurities projected into an external form,_ she reminded him. _I'm also your best guess as to what she'd say if she were here._

"Those are two very different things."

 _I'm a great multitasker._ He imagined Annie sticking her tongue out at him, and smiled.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1924:**

 **Definitely**

* * *

Jeff fought off mounting panic, closed his eyes and counted to a number. He debated telling Annie about Pierce. On the one hand, if he didn't she would eventually find out — he was certain of that — and she wouldn't like that he kept the secret from her. On the other hand, if he did tell her it would submarine her shot at a ridiculous amount of money. On the third hand, the money was tied up in various extralegal offshore accounts, and claiming it would involve paying an arm and a leg in taxes and fees. On the fourth hand, even with the arm and the leg spent, there would still be several limbs' worth of money, and some was better than none…

 _You'd better tell me. I'd never forgive you,_ she warned him. _Okay, that's not true, I'd forgive you eventually but I'd be really mad in the meantime, buster._

He decided not to tell her. She'd forgiven him everything else up to this point.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1925:**

 **Tomorrow?**

* * *

Annie frowned, surprised. She'd expected him to suggest they meet that night. Ideally he would come to her, as she'd visited his apartment the night before. But maybe he wasn't as eager as she'd thought. Or maybe she was reading too much into it. Or maybe she'd been reading too much into last night…

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1926:**

 **Ok**

* * *

She tried to think of something else to add. Telling him about her day, the way she'd used to do over the summer, seemed weirdly pointless; she'd see him soon enough, right? Still, she needed to say something else…

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1926:**

 **[Smile emoji]**

* * *

She winced, looking at it.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1926:**

 **[Smile emoji] [heart emoji] [flower emoji] [other flower emoji] [first flower emoji again] [kiss emoji] [puppy emoji] [banner emoji] [cake emoji] [unicorn emoji] [ferris wheel emoji] [100 emoji]**

* * *

That did not seem like an improvement.

* * *

"What the hell?" Jeff felt his pulse quicken. He started to type in _I don't understand what if anything you're trying to communicate_ but paused and considered Imaginary Annie's take.

"You probably think I should just roll with it," he guessed. "Because she doesn't really want to see me again, or something?"

 _No, of course not._ Obviously _I want to see you again. Have you not been paying attention for the last forty-eight hours?_ He imagined her sitting up, to give him an affectionate punch on the arm. _I'm tired and kind of overwhelmed and I need a little break, is all… hey! You're no longer imagining me claiming I'm not actually into you! That's progress! Good for you._

"Thanks…"

 _So calm down, it's going to be okay. But yes, I do think you should roll with it. Just relax, all right? Throw in some random icons._

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1929:**

 **[heart emoji] [airplane emoji] [palm tree emoji] [Eiffel Tower emoji] [palm tree emoji] [car emoji] [heart emoji]**

* * *

Annie squinted at the string of emojis, baffled. Was he suggesting they take a vacation together? To Paris, or to someplace tropical? No. Surely she was misunderstanding.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1931:**

 **What?**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1933:**

 **I don't know! You were getting very abstract and I was trying to respond in kind!**

 **[Confused emoji] [Confused emoji] [Confused emoji]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1934:**

 **Sorry! [Blush emoji]**

 **There's a lot on my mind**

 **You, Pierce, the tapes…**

 **[Confused emoji] [moon emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1935:**

 **We did not actually get around to talking about the tapes at or after dinner did we**

* * *

Annie was typing a reply — _I for one have no regrets_ — when she heard the apartment door slam. Vicki appeared in her bedroom doorway, a moment later. She looked tired and rumpled, and after a day of baking, she had flour in her hair.

"You're still alive," Vicki said mechanically. "That's cool. Doing laundry?"

"Just about to," Annie replied. She remembered that the last time she'd seen Vicki was before she'd had broken up with her boyfriend (boyfriends?). "Would you like to do laundry together?"

Vicki scowled, and looked like she was going to retort with something sullen and bitter, but then she sighed. "Sure, whatever. I need to do laundry. Give me a second."

"Sure…" Annie watched Vicki lurch into her bedroom and close the door, then turned back to her phone.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 1938:**

 **I for one have no regrets**

 **Hold that thought [worry emoji] Vicki just came home**

 **She broke up with Neil I think? I should talk to her**

 **[Kiss emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF (NEW!) to ANNIE, 1938:**

 **Ok [kiss emoji]**

* * *

 _Was that a boyfriendy kind of interaction?_ Annie wondered. That seemed pretty dang boyfriendy. Annie rose and began stuffing her laundry into her big fabric bag, to carry it to the laundromat. "Do you have quarters?" she called to Vicki.

"Yeah!" Vicki called back, in a cracked voice that stirred Annie to stop what she was doing and go to Vicki's bedroom door.

"Hey…" she said, slowly opening the door a crack. "Can I come in?"

Vicki was sprawled on her bed, still in her coat, staring at the ceiling with reddened eyes and wet cheeks. "Quarters are on the dresser," she said without looking at Annie. She pointed in the general direction of her chest of drawers.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Annie asked softly, sitting on the corner of Vicki's bed.

"Talk about what?" Vicki blinked back tears. "I mean, it's no big deal. Neil and I broke up, but we were basically over already. And then Todd, it turns out, doesn't want a girlfriend, he just wants a friend who's a girl who's willing to…" She swallowed. "And, you know, Quendra's pissed because I show up late and she thinks I can't make stupid lemon bars and she's right. Myrtle's bakery is losing money and I don't know how I'll make rent… shit."

Annie patted Vicki's foot in a gesture of support. "Wow, that's a lot to deal with… I'd say I've been there, but I haven't." She considered, briefly, comparing Vicki's current troubles to Annie's own, circa the summer of 2009. Or the summer of 2013, after she and Abed graduated, when she'd had the job she hated, and she'd had to cover both Abed and Troy's shares of the rent. Annie decided that would probably come across as unsympathetic. "I'm sorry that happened with Neil, and it sucks about Todd. If there's anything I can do to help, just say the word."

"Can you cover my half of the rent?" Vicki lifted her head to look at Annie, then let it fall back. "Of course you can't, I've seen your pay stub. Never mind. You've got your boyfriend now anyway."

"What? I'm not…" Annie gave Vicki's foot another squeeze. "I'm not going anywhere."

"You weren't here last night. You stayed at your boyfriend's place, after months of being all he's-not-my-boyfriend about it, didn't you?"

"Kind of," Annie admitted.

Vicki snorted in derision.

"But I'm definitely not going to disappear on you, I promise. I mean, for one thing, my name's on the lease. And Jeff isn't my boyfriend, or if he is, it'd be news to him…"

"Right, sure. He isn't your boyfriend, he's just willing to drop whatever he's doing to give you a ride to MIT, or take you to dinner, or all that other stupid boyfriend stuff that Todd thinks is just too much hassle…"

"Uh, yeah…"

"I thought I could make this work," Vicki said, rubbing her red eyes. "Neil said he was going to move out here with me. He was supposed to come in June, but he kept dragging his feet. We were skyping every night and then every weekend and… I'm pretty sure he never even looked for a job in Boston. He started a new D&D game a few weeks ago. Do you do that if you're going to change cities?"

"Probably not. That sucks."

"Yeah, well, I thought I was okay with it. I could do my own thing. Then I met Todd."

"Mmm." Annie hoped she didn't sound patronizing. She'd only met Todd once but in retrospect there were warning signs.

"Quendra thought Todd was skeevy and she was right. He just wants to be 'friends,' " Vicki made air-quotes with her fingers, "who bang sometimes. Like, that's all he wants to do with me, he has actual friends for hanging out and doing stuff with."

"Gross," Annie said, thinking of what Britta had said about their sophomore year, when Jeff had been sleeping with Britta but hanging out with her.

"For all I know he has another girlfriend," Vicki continued. "An actual girlfriend. It doesn't matter, I'm never going to see him again. It's stupid. I'm stupid, I should have known."

"You're being too hard on yourself," Annie said. "Listen, I'm going to put my coat on, and we're going to take our laundry over to the laundromat and load it, and then we're going to come back here and watch an episode of _Dawson's Creek_ , and then we're going to move our clothes to the dryers and then we'll watch _The Brothers Bloom_ on DVD, okay?"

"Ugh."

"Doing something is better than doing nothing," Annie declared.

"Okay. Okay," Vicki sat up. "But we're not watching stupid _Dawsons' Creek_. We can watch _Always Sunny_."

"I've never seen _Always Sunny_ ," Annie said anxiously. "But okay, if you want. Is it on Netflix?"

"Yeah, yeah. You'll love it," Vicki assured her with an imperious confidence that made her seem more her old self. "It's funny."

* * *

Jeff was still lounging in his living room, playing with his phone and watching television and pretending he wasn't just waiting for her to contact him again and trying not to imagine various scenarios in which she never contacted him again, not that night, not ever, when Annie finally texted him back.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2034:**

 **I do not like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia**

* * *

 _Oh, God, I definitely do not like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,_ Imaginary Annie agreed. _Everyone's stupid or mean or both, mostly both. Who are you supposed to like?_

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2037:**

 **I could have predicted that**

 **Vicki likes it?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2038:**

 **There's no one to root for!**

 **Vicki is not doing great**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE (DRAFT):**

 **Let me guess: you were going to eventually crack and invite me over tonight but Vicki is too upset and you want to support her and having your guy**

* * *

He stopped mid-text. " 'Your guy?' " he said aloud.

 _Well, we've established that I love you and maybe not just as an uncle after all, Imaginary Annie said anxiously, but probably we should talk about it before you just declare yourself to be my guy. 'My guy' is basically 'my boyfriend.' You aren't my boyfriend._ She made a face, thinking. _I mean, you aren't_ not _my boyfriend. I don't know. We should talk about it._

Jeff nodded.

 _I like labels._

"Oh, believe me, I know."

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2040:**

 **Let me guess: you were going to eventually crack and invite me over tonight but Vicki is too upset and you want to support her and having me come over would undermine that**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2041:**

 **Basically**

 **Oh God**

 **They're going to try crack cocaine**

 **Why would you do that?**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2042:**

 **That's a good episode**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2043:**

 **You would like this show [glower emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2044:**

 **[Grin emoji]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 2046:**

 **Okay Vicki says you can come over but you have to bring her ice cream**

 **She wants rocky road**

 **[Kiss emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 2047:**

 **I'll be there in 30**


	26. I Do, Though

"Psst!"

Jeff blinked a few times. For some reason, Annie was hissing at him. "Hmm?"

"You were asleep," she said with an smile as she curled up with her feet under her, next to him.

For a split second he thought perhaps he was dreaming, that Imaginary Annie had broken free. Then he remembered where he was, and why, and relaxed. "I was not," Jeff retorted. He glanced around. Vicki had disappeared and the television was no longer showing an episode of _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_ , but in general the environment hadn't changed. He was still sitting at one end of the couch, leaning back with his feet up on Vicki's coffee table. Annie had moved from the other end of the couch to practically on top of him, but that was a welcome improvement.

She was close enough that he could feel the rise and fall of her breathing. "So you just sat there, eyes closed, pretending to sleep while Vicki and I made fun of your forehead?" Annie spoke quietly, almost whispering into his ear.

Jeff sat up, perturbed, which had the unfortunate side effect of pushing Annie a little away from him. "What? Why would you make fun of — new question, what's it to you if I was asleep?"

"Well, Vicki went to bed." She seemed on the verge of laughing. "And I need to go to bed…" She ran her fingers along his arm and shoulder. "And you're welcome to sleep here if you want—"

He scoffed. "You say that like there's a chance I might not want to sleep with you."

"Ha ha. I meant, sleep here on the couch." Annie leaned close up against him again, her chin on his shoulder. "You've seen my bed. It's a futon and it's tiny. It's only a twin; it converts to a chair. Don't give me that look," she added, seeing his glare. "It was here when I moved in."

"Okay, that's priority one. I was going to buy you flowers or a cheese clock but no, plainly what you need is a real bed."

She sighed, but he could tell she was pleased. "You don't need to… wait, a cheese clock? What's a cheese clock?"

"Did I say that? I didn't say that." Jeff cleared his throat. "Did you really wake me up to tell me I could go to sleep?"

"I thought you might want to drive home and sleep in your own bed… I mean, you're welcome to stay," she added quickly. "It's just, there isn't anywhere good for you to sleep."

"Oh. Sure." Jeff stretched, and she shifted back again. "I can go. I'll see you tomorrow?" He bent over, ostensibly to look for his shoes, but mostly so Annie couldn't see the disappointed expression on his face. _Casual, dammit, casual. You can do this. It's okay. It's okay._

"Of course! Listen, you can stay, really. It's just, my bed… and the couch…"

"No, no, it's fine. I'm going."

Annie sighed. "I made this weird, didn't I?"

"Nah. Little bit." Jeff shrugged. "It's okay." He patted her leg, which became a one-armed hug, which became kissing her, with her enthusiastic assistance.

"Thanks for coming over," she said a moment later. "Not because…" She smiled. "I mean, I didn't think you were actually going to get Vicki ice cream."

"Clearly I had to get Vicki ice cream. I don't want your roommate whispering negative innuendos about me in your ear."

"Negative innuendos?" she repeated skeptically.

"I don't know! You just woke me up."

"Oh, so, now that it's a convenient defense to evade consequences for phrases like 'cheese clock' and 'negative innuendos,' _now_ you're admitting that you fell asleep?"

Jeff tried to scowl, but failed — her smirk was too adorable. "I am way too groggy for this."

"If you're so groggy," Annie said solicitously, "then maybe you shouldn't be driving. I'd hate for you to fall asleep on Storrow Drive and crash."

"I'll be fine."

"Okay then." She watched as Jeff pulled his shoes back on. "You know, I've never had anyone show up with ice cream for my brokenhearted roommate, just because I asked for it."

He smirked at that. "I've done a lot more than that when you've asked, over the years."

"I know! But still…" Annie scooted back on the couch, the better to regard him. "I'm like, 'bring over ice cream,' and you do? And then you sit back all cute on the couch… it was a different side of Jeff Winger than I'm used to. More domestic."

Jeff leaned back and turned to face her. "You've got every side of Jeff Winger at your disposal, you know that."

"Do I?" Annie asked, sounding far more uncertain than he'd expected.

Jeff scoffed; the answer to her question was, he thought, self-evident. "Yeah, you do. And if my options are driving home or sleeping on the couch, then I should be going."

"Um." She bit her lip. "How about a sleeping bag next to my bed?"

"Like a slumber party? You know neither of us are in elementary school, right?"

"Hey," she said, holding up her hands, "if you don't want to, that's fine."

He smiled. "No, no, I'm going to. I just like giving you a hard time."

"That sounds like you." Annie leaned over, ran one hand lightly across his chest. "How sleepy are you, really?"

"Why do you ask?"

She gave a little shrug. "I might have stopped at a drugstore on the way home and I might have picked up a few things. Stuff."

" 'Things' plural?" Jeff asked, intrigued.

"Just some stuff." Annie pointed towards her bedroom. "There might be a shopping bag hanging on the inside knob of my bedroom door…"

He smiled as he rose and headed in the direction she'd pointed. "I should have predicted you'd plan ahead — that's my Annie."

"Mmm, is that who I am?" she asked, her face lighting up as she followed him. "Your Annie? Does that make you my Jeff?"

Jeff crossed the threshold into her room. "Have I not been dopily clear about that?"

"Heh." Annie closed the door behind her, and leaned against it. "Seriously, though, what are we doing here, exactly?"

He turned, feigning confusion. "What, you lure me in with promises of _Always Sunny_ and a shopping bag of miscellaneous 'stuff,' and…?"

"Are we a couple now?" she asked, suddenly deadly serious. "Vicki thinks you're my boyfriend but she thinks you've been my boyfriend for the last five or six years."

Jeff smiled in a way he hoped was disarming. "Vicki's not real perceptive."

She smiled faintly in return. "Maybe more perceptive than you think."

"Do you want a boyfriend?" Realizing that this was a conversation that was happening now, apparently, Jeff sat down on Annie's twin bed. "I mean, obviously… it wasn't more than a few nights ago that you were suggesting we not talk about this for a week." He tried the smile again, hoping to keep it low-key. _Act casual,_ he reminded himself. _If she isn't up for a relationship, don't push her. Don't make this awkward._

"That is not what I suggested," Annie said, probably more petulantly than she meant to. "I suggested we just take it slow—"

Jeff cut her off before she worked herself up. "Which we did," he said, "for… what, almost an hour?"

"More like a day." Annie reddened slightly, remembering the night before. "It's been a pretty crazy week. But you didn't answer my question."

"You didn't answer mine! I've been very clear," he said, more defensively than he meant to. Neither of them wanted this to turn into a fight. "I will do whatever you're willing to do. I just want to—"

"To be part of my life, yeah," Annie said, nodding. "That sounds pretty… boyfriendy."

She looked at him, and he stared resolutely at his feet. "I guess it does."

Panic flashed over Annie's face before she recovered. "If you don't want to do this, that's fine, but I need to know if—"

Jeff winced, and quickly looked up, making eye contact with her. "No, no, I'm sorry, I do. I just don't want to screw anything up by moving too fast."

"Yeah, well." Annie tossed her shoulders back and gave him a nervous smile. "I know how that feels. I can definitely see the appeal of never talking about it, of just making out instead, whenever the subject comes up. But you know me: I thrive on labels and tidy categories and checklists."

Jeff nodded thoughtfully. "We've been dancing around this for a few days now."

Annie folded her arms. "We've been dancing around this for a lot longer than that."

"Yeah, I guess we have." Jeff took a deep breath before taking the plunge. "So do I get to be your boyfriend?" He paused, watching her expression, before continuing in a firmer tone of voice. "I want to be your boyfriend. Sooner or later you're going to be president or empress or regional director of the FBI, so I should get in on the ground floor. Stay on your good side."

She smiled that shy little smile he only saw when he was very lucky. "So… okay," Annie said, with the finality of a judge rendering a verdict. "I grant you permission to be my boyfriend. If I get to be your girlfriend."

"If you get to…?" Jeff chuckled. "That sounds like a real bargain for me. I'd be a fool not to jump at the chance."

"Well, okay then." Annie's smile grew as he stepped towards her for a kiss.

"Okay." Jeff hesitated, his lips inches from hers. He felt at least as giddy as she looked.

She let out a little squeak of frustration when he didn't close the distance immediately, and before he knew what was happening she'd grabbed him and pulled him down to her, kissing him with an ardor unmatched since at least the night before.

* * *

About an hour later they reached the point of investigating the contents of the shopping bag.

"I didn't know what would be helpful, or appropriate," Annie warned Jeff as she emptied the bag onto the bed between them. "It's not something I have a lot of experience with…"

"You used to live above a sex shop," he pointed out.

"That was… I only went in a couple of times, just to look, and it was really different from the aisle of the CVS with the tampons and the pregnancy tests. I just mean, I don't know, like, what _brands_ are good, so I got a bunch. I'm not expecting to use, uh… however many condoms that is." She gestured to the small pile of cardboard boxes.

Jeff grinned at her. He examined the boxes and did some mental addition. "One hundred ninety-four. Yeah, I think this should last us at least a couple of days."

Annie let out a nervous chuckle. "And you know, there's a bunch of different _kinds_ of, um, personal lubricant…"

"So we can experiment. Or just pick one, or… it's okay." He pulled her into his lap, embracing her with an affection that might have seemed platonic had they been dressed, or had he not followed it up by sliding her hair out of the way and kissing the side of her neck. "Thanks for thinking ahead," he murmured in her ear. "If I'd been thinking ahead I'd have picked up condoms when I bought Vicki's ice cream."

She hummed, enjoying his attention. "Mmm. Um, well. I don't have your, um, experience in this area… I don't want to disappoint —"

Jeff coughed, suddenly. "Hah. Yeah. That's not going to happen. There is zero possibility of _you_ disappointing _me_." He flashed what she recognized as his anxious stall-for-time grin. "I'm the one whose last lover, four years ago, complained more than once—" He broke off abruptly, realizing that this was a terrible time to bring up Britta.

Annie, at least, either hadn't made that connection or else she didn't dwell on it. She drew up to reassure him, placing one hand on the back of his neck and looking him in the eye. "Jeff, I promise you… you…" She trailed off, laughing at her seriousness. "We're really overthinking this."

Jeff nodded. "Getting all up in our heads, yeah. We can kiss, though. I like the kissing."

Annie affected a pained whine. "But we were doing so well! It took us five years to get from first to second base. Don't tell me we need another five years to… what do you call it when a base runner advances from third? There's got to be a term."

"We don't have to do anything right this second," Jeff said, as he played with her hair. "Legally we have thirty days to have sex before our relationship is annulled."

Annie giggled. "I don't think that's true…"

"Which one of us is a lawyer?"

* * *

Afterwards they managed to share the twin mattress. Jeff might have migrated to the floor next to Annie's bed, but she'd fallen asleep on top of his arm and he would have had to wake her and disentangle himself and there was no chance of that happening. In the morning his back was killing him, but it was worth it.

* * *

Friday found Annie in an ebullient mood. For the second time in two days, she had awakened in Jeff's arms. He was snoring lightly, something that for years after Annie would find frustrating, but in the moment she thought it inexpressibly lovable. It felt good to wake up with the memory of the night before, and even better to wake up with him there. She debated getting him up; he'd woken up when her alarm went off, a few minutes after Annie was already awake, but he'd rolled over and gone back to sleep immediately. She settled for waking him again after she'd already showered and dressed and prepared herself for the day, a few minutes before she needed to walk out the door. He offered to drive her into the city, if she'd give him a minute to find his pants and shoes, but Annie turned him down, on the grounds that she needed to clear her head before arriving at the office. So instead Jeff insisted she meet him the instant she was off the clock, and she gracefully gave into his demands.

"Small triple americano?" Jeanne the barista asked Annie as she approached the counter at Beans 'n Things. "You look chipper."

"Hi! Yeah, no. You know what? Small latte. Gonna mix it up today!" Annie grinned at Jeanne, who held fast to her usual expression of slight disgust.

"That's amazing. You're really stepping out of your little bubble and growing as a person," Jeanne said. "You got a milk preference, or you just want to roll the dice?"

"Surprise me!"

"Awesome. Almond milk," Jeanne announced as she notated that on a paper cup. "You'll love it. It costs way more than regular milk; that's prestige you're paying for. You think Kanye drinks milk squeezed from cows, like a _calf_? No, it's almonds all the way."

"Um, okay," Annie said, a little taken aback. "Sure. Fine."

"Good call. It's a real power move. But I have a better surprise for you. I know, you ask, what could be a better surprise than almond milk? Buckle up, sister!"

"What?"

Jeanne turned her head slightly, indicating to Annie's right.

Annie turned her head, then froze when she saw the guy at the table near the window.

"Hi," said Joe Brown.

"It's a crazy ride," Jeanne declared.

"I've got it," Joe Brown said when Annie turned away from him and tried to pay for the latte. "Come here, sit down, I really need to talk to you."

"That's okay," Annie said awkwardly. "I'd really rather just buy my own —"

"It's okay. I'm willing to let each of you pay," Jeanne declared, with Solomonic gravitas. "I'll just pocket the extra money, no questions asked. That's my gift to you."

Joe Brown tried again. "If you're willing, I just need a few minutes of your time."

"I mean, my bus is going to be here in… uh…" Annie glanced at the app on her phone, then did a double take. In her desire to not let Jeff keep her in the apartment too late she'd left too early. "Ten minutes?"

"It's about Pierce Hawthorne!" cried Joe Brown.

"Oooh." Jeanne gave her best impression of a live studio audience, marveling at the escalation. "I did not see that coming!"

"Are you being sarcastic?" Annie asked her.

"Duh. I don't know who Pierce Hawthorne is," Jeanne said amiably. "Are you guys going to pay double for this almond milk latte, or not?"

* * *

"Pierce Hawthorne is alive," Joe Brown told her, once Annie had reluctantly sat down across from him.

"How do you know? And how do you even know I know Pierce?"

"Okay. Well. I wasn't completely honest with you before," Joe Brown admitted.

Annie folded her arms. "Well, I knew that…"

"I didn't tell her anything!" called Jeanne from behind the counter. "Except about you being a weirdo!"

Joe Brown wiped his brow. "No, it's like… okay. I'm a private investigator. I was hired to watch you. I wasn't supposed to talk to you, but you were just so nice…"

"You're a spy?"

"I'm a PI. My client — I shouldn't tell you this. There's supposed to be confidentiality. My client is a lawyer downtown."

"William Stone, at Biddle Heath," Annie guessed immediately.

"Yeah, he — I didn't say that!" Joe Brown winced. "I didn't say that. He hired me to watch you every day, make sure you were going to work, and that you were well, and… I don't know why, but I pieced together that he's working with this fugitive who faked his death, Pierce Hawthorne…? You knew him back in Colorado—"

Annie interrupted him. "Is your name even Joe Brown?"

Joe Brown looked embarrassed. "Actually, no. Joseph Braunschweig. Hi." He smiled nervously and extended his hand, which Annie didn't shake. "I wasn't supposed to talk to you," he continued, slowly retracting his hand. "The stuff about having the Natalie Is Freezing tickets for my mother, and wanting to take you out, all that was true."

She grunted in the most discouraging manner she could muster.

"I'm sorry that evening didn't go better," he added. "I got fired for asking you out, and it kind of put a damper on things."

Annie frowned. "Something did, anyway." Mostly, like she'd thought at the time, she hadn't enjoyed the date because it wasn't with Jeff.

"But I know you've been seeing a new guy," Joe Brown — Joseph Braunschweig? — said. He retrieved a laptop from the bag by his feet and flipped it open in front of her. "Jeff Winger. You knew him in Colorado and now he's here. He's a lawyer at Biddle Heath too, did you know that?"

"I did, yeah. How do you know I've been seeing Jeff?"

He chuckled anxiously. "Well, I, uh, I was hired to surveil you—"

"You just said you got fired."

"Yeah."

Annie glared at him. "So you've been stalking me?"

"Not cool, Joey," Jeanne interjected. "Not cool."

"Uh, I was concerned, okay?" He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "And with good reason, I mean, this guy Winger — do you know what he was doing yesterday?"

"Bringing my roommate ice cream?" It was definitely in the top three most boyfriendy things anyone had ever done for Annie, she was pretty sure, alongside 'drive her to the airport and kiss her goodbye' and 'ask to be her boyfriend.'

Joseph Braunschweig shook his head, nonplussed. "He was meeting Pierce Hawthorne!"

Annie leaned back, ready to unload a full salvo of aggressive skepticism on this guy, when he tapped a key on the laptop. Its screen suddenly sprang to life, showing a series of digital photos. Jeff and Mark and Stone, getting out of a car in a driveway at a little suburban-looking house. Them knocking on the door. Another man — Pierce? — opening the door and beckoning them in. The four men barely visible through a window — Jeff, Mark, Stone, and maybe-Pierce. An extreme close-up of the back of someone's head, through the same window. Pierce — finally, a clear shot, definitely Pierce — and Jeff shaking hands in the driveway, as the group prepared to leave again.

"I took these yesterday afternoon in Squantum," Joseph Braunschweig declared as he watched her stare at the laptop. "That's Pierce Hawthorne. He's supposed to be dead."

"Yeah. Yeah, he is," Annie said absently. Meanwhile her mind was racing: maybe Jeff had been in cahoots with Pierce since… worst-case scenario, since before that farce of a faked death. God, how stupid must she have been, to believe that ridiculous story? In retrospect it was blindingly obvious and she felt like an idiot. Jeff had just been jerking her around, same as Pierce, and…

No. Think about it for two seconds and that falls apart. Jeff must have just found out about it. He was so certain that Pierce was alive, at least as of Wednesday night. It was only Friday, and he'd spent both nights since then with her. If these were taken on Thursday, it must have been just as Jeff was getting his conspiracy theories confirmed. If he'd known about it when they found the VHS tapes… or was that a trick? She thought back. She'd found the tapes in Stone's office. She'd suggested searching Stone's office, not him. Granted, Jeff had talked her into it, when she'd balked, but he wasn't so manipulative as to trick her into thinking it was her own idea, was he?

He couldn't have known Pierce was alive then, she decided. It wouldn't make sense for him to point out to her the errors in his legal documents (she wasn't quite sure what they were but she believed Jeff when he said they proved that both sides of the suit he was working on were the same person or group of people). He'd said he would confront Stone about it. Probably he had. Probably Stone's response was to admit the jig was up and arrange a face-to-face meeting.

So why hadn't he told her immediately? He could have texted her yesterday afternoon, just before or just after the event Joseph Braunschweig had photographed. Even if he thought it was something that needed to be revealed in person, which made some sense, he'd had ample opportunity to do that last night. Maybe not while Vicki was there, but after she'd gone to bed and Annie had done her best-friend duty? There had to be some reason, probably a very reasonable reason; she just couldn't guess what it was. Of course they hadn't talked about a very wide range of topics, at that point… maybe he meant to and then all the making out and physical intimacy had driven it out of his mind…

For right this second, Jeff deserved the benefit of the doubt, Annie decided. She'd ask him about it when she saw him next. Which would be, Annie thought with a little giddy kick, later that same day. They hadn't actually made plans for the weekend, but it seemed fairly likely that at the very least they'd end up spending several hours in dishabille together, probably in Jeff's luxurious downtown apartment…

"I know, it's a lot to take in," Joseph Braunschweig said, and Annie jolted back to the present. He probably assumed she was reeling from the revelation of Jeff's supposed betrayal.

"Yeah, definitely," Annie said, looking up from the laptop at last. "Thanks for bringing this to my attention."

Joseph Braunschweig reared back. "Is that it?"

"Hmm?" Annie took a sip from her latte, then made a face. "This is terrible," she called over her shoulder to Jeanne.

"It's not, you're just wrong," Jeanne called back. "You don't know what good is! Mass media has lied to you!"

"Jeff Winger has been colluding with Pierce Hawthorne behind your back," Joseph Braunschweig said, nonplussed by Annie's lack of reaction.

" _Colluding_ is a pretty strong word," Annie observed. She took another sip of the almond milk latte. Still terrible. "I gave this a fair try. It's an acquired taste," she said sadly, setting the latte down on the table in front of her. "Jeanne? Can I just get a small americano, extra shot?"

"Ugh, fine, but you know I'm disappointed in you," Jeanne called back. "Are you paying for it, or is Mister Moneybags here gonna get this one too?"

"Oh, I'll pay." Annie turned back to Joseph Braunschweig. "Thanks though," she said, rising.

"He's — you can't just — he's been lying to you!" Joseph Braunschweig sputtered.

"No, no… well. Maybe he didn't tell me everything immediately, but I'm sure it's fine. I'll talk to him about it, all right? Great."

"But…" Joseph Braunschweig trailed off, dejected. "I mean, can I… can I take you to dinner or a movie or something?"

"Thanks, I'm flattered, you have no idea how rarely anyone asks me out." Or maybe he does, she thought, since he'd apparently been all up in her secrets private-investigator style. "But it turns out I've got a boyfriend, so…" She shrugged, almost apologetically. "Also you're a weird stalker."

"But he's a liar… I… okay, here, look, take my card, and call me? Or I can call you, if—"

Behind the counter, Jeanne let out a bark of laughter. "Joe! Joe, Joe, Joe." She shook her head sadly. "Joe, Joe, Joe. You poor, sad little half-man."

"I gave you a fifty when I came in," Joseph Braunschweig protested.

"And yet I still don't respect you," Jeanne said with a sympathetic sigh. "Some people just can't win for losing."

"I'm just going to go," Annie announced.

"Your coffee?" Jeanne offered her the americano, and Annie accepted it. "Don't worry, I'll take it out of his fifty. Another little present, only because we're such good friends."

"Thanks."

"You can't trust him!" cried Joseph Braunschweig.

Annie turned to go. She figured she had enough time, she could walk to the T station and get there ahead of her bus. "I do, though," she said, and left.

Joseph Braunschweig sighed, and rested his forehead on the tabletop in front of him.

"Wow, that went terribly for you," Jeanne said.

"Yeah. It really did."

"I feel bad for you," Jeanne announced. "So I'm going to make you a mocha, and not even charge you for it. Just taking it out of the fifty you gave me before! That's because I feel sorry for you."

"Thanks," he grumbled sarcastically.

"You're welcome!" Jeanne replied as she started on the mocha. "You should feel privileged because this is pretty unusual. I don't often feel sorry for people. Amusement, contempt, sure, but pity? Rare."

"Great."

"If you die in the next five minutes, like if you step out into the street and get run over by Annie's bus, then you'll be able to take comfort in the knowledge that your life wasn't spent in vain. Because you met me, which makes you very lucky, and you made me feel a feeling, which makes you even more special. Here you go, special boy, a small mocha." Jeanne set the cup down on the counter. She stepped back as Joseph Braunschweig rose and approached it.

"Thanks," he said, as he took the mocha. Then he straightened up, and looked Jeanne square in the eye. "So I'm a special boy, huh?"

"If that's what you need to get through the day." Jeanne made a moue. "People have built lives on lesser things."

"Maybe I'm special enough to buy you a cup of coffee sometime?"

Jeanne burst out laughing. "Oh, that was good. Thanks, I love to laugh. Amusement!"

Joseph Braunschweig sat back down at his laptop, and turned to face away from Jeanne. "Yeah, well. Maybe I'll just get a dog."

"I don't know if I'd trust you with a dog, Joe. Maybe start with a chia pet, see how well you handle that responsibility…"

* * *

 **ANNIE to HIS NAME IS JOE, 0709:**

 **Also you're a pretty terrible PI if you didn't notice Jeff's car parked outside my place this morning! [Happy emoji]**

 **Please never contact me again.**

* * *

 **ERASE CONTACT "HIS NAME IS JOE"? [YES]**

 **BLOCK THIS NUMBER? [YES]**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF (NEW!), 0710:**

 **[Heart emoji] So Pierce is in Squantum, huh? [Kiss emoji]**

 **(I had to look it up it's a suburb on the other side of the city)**

 **(But you knew that?) [Raised eyebrow emoji] [flower emoji] [kiss emoji]**

* * *

Just before she reached the office Annie finally did something she'd been meaning to do for a while.

* * *

 **MERGE CONTACT "JEFF (NEW!)" WITH "JEFF (OLD NUMBER DELETE THIS)"? [YES]**

* * *

It took a little while to process, and when it did happen, Jeff was driving so he didn't see it right away. But in Jeff's coat pocket, his phone buzzed with one hundred seventeen new text messages.


	27. Mark Would Agree With Me

Chapter Text

Jeff was smiling for no reason, as he drove through morning traffic from Annie's apartment towards the city center. Normally he walked to work, as the Biddle Heath office was only about ten minutes from his apartment. Jeff briefly considered parking in the office's garage, but it made more sense to just take the car back to his building, shower and change, and walk in as per usual. So it was that he was on the sidewalk, heading towards his usual Starbucks en route to work, when he checked his messages.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **You could have just texted me, you know**

 **Oh that's right you've changed your phone like a baby**

* * *

"What the —?" Jeff muttered aloud.

 _Well, I think we can agree I have good reason to hold that against you,_ Imaginary Annie said as she fell into pace next to him, her feet not quite touching the ground. She shivered a little, in her thin purple cardigan. _I admit it's kind of whiplash from what I was saying last night. Maybe it's a good thing! Maybe now that you're my boyfriend I feel like it's safe to express my frustration._

More messages kept coming, as though Annie were texting him a furious novel.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **Why did you do this?**

 **I was really looking forward to seeing you and maybe finally talking about us**

 **Do you really think I want to move to Boston and never see you again?**

 **I know you're not getting these messages but dammit Jeff**

 **I'm living with Vicki now! I have no idea how that happened**

 **I wish I could tell you about it**

 **First day at new job, wish me luck! Oh right you can't**

 **Sometime I'll get bored with riding the subway but right now I still think it's neat**

 **Do you ride the subway ever? Is there a subway where you are?**

 **I'm mad I can't ask you that. It's a simple question!**

* * *

It wasn't until the 'first day at new job' text that Jeff realized what must have happened. Annie had tried texting him, even after he cancelled his number, in hopes of reaching him. He should have known she wouldn't give up easily; this was Annie, after all. Probably she'd sent him a text every few days, just in case one made it through. Odd that he would suddenly get them all, now.

 _I might have set this up, now that I have your new number. Just to remind you how hurt I was when you vanished on me._

Jeff didn't think he needed to be reminded of that.

More messages came in, one after another. Comments about the weather, questions about his opinion on weeks-old news items, the occasional expression of frustration. As he read them, Jeff found himself blinking back tears more than once.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **I miss you way more than you deserve**

 **You kept me dangling for so long and I'm mad at you and I still think about you every day.**

 **I meet a cute guy and he's sweet and friendly and I can't help thinking about you the whole time**

* * *

And, too, he chuckled several times.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **When I am an FBI agent if you haven't shown up I am going to find you I don't care if you don't want to be found**

 **I will find you and chew you out about it**

 **Ew no! Don't be gross Jeff**

 **I did not mean chewing like nibbling on your earlobe, jeez**

* * *

They kept coming. Just when he'd come to terms with the messages, their tenor changed suddenly, and Jeff felt like he'd been punched in the gut.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **I cannot believe you**

 **You say one thing and you do another**

 **And you'd think I would have learned by now**

 **But apparently I can't even trust you to abandon me properly**

 **Now Britta gave me your number so I could call you whenever I want**

 **I refuse to! You abandoned me!**

 **I can't believe you don't know I'm here.**

 **Are you sure you don't know?**

 **Britta said you didn't but it's not like you wouldn't be able to fool her**

 **Are you watching me?**

 **You know I have a date**

 **I was trying to pretend I was excited about it**

 **I didn't get coffee this morning because I don't want to see him**

 **It's kind of cold here today but you know that already don't you?**

 **We could be walking through Boston like this together**

 **If you weren't just a jerky jerkface self-centered baby**

 **I almost called you twice today**

* * *

 _ **You abandoned me! And apparently I can't even trust you to abandon me properly! I cannot believe you!**_

* * *

By this point Jeff was in the elevator, heading up to his office. When the doors opened he walked out in a basically normal way. Yes, he was leaning against the wall, because standing up straight was proving to be extremely difficult and his heart was racing, but otherwise it was very normal. If he kept his hands in his pockets they mostly stopped shaking.

"Good morning, Jeff — Jeff!" Sheila, the receptionist, looked at him in horror. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said, which didn't seem to mollify her even a little. He tried to smile disarmingly at her, but Sheila's expression suggested he hadn't pulled that one off.

She rose and circled around her desk, to take him by the arm and lead him to one of the plush waiting-area chairs. "Why don't you catch your breath, and I'll get you some water… or, uh — Andrea!" she called down the hallway, because she remembered that you shouldn't leave someone in a medical emergency alone, regardless of circumstance, if you could help it.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Jeff snapped. "It's fine, Sheila."

"Are you sure?" she asked anxiously.

"Absolutely. I just — I'm okay. I'm okay, I said!" Jeff could feel the phone vibrating in his coat as more messages came in. It took a serious effort of will to resist looking at it. "I'm fine."

"Maybe just sit for a minute? Water?"

Clearly he wasn't going to get away from her without letting Sheila cluck over him, at least a little. "Water'd be fine," Jeff said. "I'm just going to sit here for a second."

"Water? Yes?" she asked, as though he wasn't enunciating clearly and speaking in a medium, calm tone, which he was almost positive he was doing. Clearly it was Sheila who was having trouble understanding him, not him who was having trouble.

"Water, sure," Jeff agreed. He started to take his phone out of his coat pocket, so she would be able to see how nonchalant he was, just sitting there texting, but it slipped out of his hand. Sheila dove for it and handed it to him like he was an invalid who couldn't bend over and pick a phone up off the floor.

He resisted returning to the texts immediately — he didn't want to do it while Sheila was watching him like a hawk — but a couple minutes after she'd fetched him some water he decided he could make it back to his office. He assured Sheila he was fine, just a little tired, and thanked her for her concern. Only once Jeff was safely ensconced in his office, with the door closed, did he open up the messages again.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **It's been barely a day since I saw you and**

 **I was going to say I was already over it**

* * *

He took a few deep breaths.

 _Maybe you should delete the rest of them without looking,_ Imaginary Annie suggested as she stood behind him, reading over his shoulder. She rubbed the back of his neck in sympathy. _I don't want you to feel bad, and you're taking this really hard. Was that a panic attack? Is that what that was? Been a while since that happened, huh?_

He was fine.

 _You had us worried for a minute there. If you don't want to read the rest of them I'll understand._

No, no. He needed to read them. She'd written them as a record of what he'd done to her, and she'd sent them because she'd wanted him to read them, to read them and know and understand what he'd done to her.

 _It's okay,_ Imaginary Annie whispered into his ear as she massaged his shoulders from behind. _I was upset when I wrote these but now I'm okay. The last time you saw me I was grinning like a crazy lady, remember? And last night was…_ Imaginary Annie trailed off, smiling to herself. _Very, very good,_ she said primly. _These texts are from the past. It's over, it's done with, I've moved on from this. I mean, I'm inside you to the extent that you routinely imagine me following you around and commenting on whatever you're doing, right? Is it really so hard to believe you might be in me, too? Is it surprising that you could have this much effect on me?_

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **I can't believe you, you know that?**

 **You act like you were doing me a favor, blah blah I deserve better, and then you ask me out**

 **The worst part is I really wanted to say yes**

 **I miss you. Jerk**

 **What do you want from me?**

* * *

 _You can hurt me as much as I can hurt you, and just as inadvertently._

Jeff nodded heavily, and forced himself to keep reading, through Annie's response to his message to her about how Pierce had sent him away to Delaware for the weekend (though at the time they hadn't known it was Pierce).

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **Delaware! Land of Mystery and Enchantment! How could I resent being pre-empted by a visit to Wilmington, the City of Lights?**

 **You really know how to make a girl feel valued**

 **Is this what normal people do? This sucks.**

* * *

 _I've still got a sense of humor about it. And see, here's right after Will Stone called me…_

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **If only I had a lawyer of my own to advise me!**

 **I wouldn't be able to pay him, of course, but perhaps we could work out some alternate arrangement…**

 **I meant a contingency basis!**

 **Gross, Jeff! Get your mind out of the gutter**

* * *

He smiled at that. Jeff kept reading, eventually coming to the end, which took him a little while to decipher.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **You're probably thinking it's me who's sending mixed messages now**

 **But I wasn't ready to say goodbye, so, here we are**

 **I wonder if you can see me texting**

 **Maybe you're wondering who I'm talking to!**

 **It's nice of you to drive us over though**

 **Okay that was weird I need to talk to you about it**

 **Dr. Brochure asked why I wasn't with the man I loved**

 **That's funny Dr. Brochure**

 **I said you were out in the hall**

 **Of course you were probably seducing Linda or something out there**

 **I wish we could talk more about it**

 **I don't even know where to start**

 **Is this really happening? Or am I pinning too much on too little evidence?**

 **I mean, this is you we're talking about [suspicious face emoji]**

 **But then again, it's you [heart-eyed face emoji]**

* * *

 _It's okay. I mean, obviously you know it's okay, because you're imagining me trying to reassure you instead of scolding you or taking you to task for hurting me._ Imaginary Annie shrugged. _So that's good, I guess?_

Jeff nodded absently.

 _You gave Sheila a scare, though. You remember how you were diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder a few years ago? I know you don't like to talk about it, or think about it, but… I would definitely be supportive if you started therapy again._

He sat quietly in his office, for a few minutes, then stopped by the coffee machine en route to Mark's office. Mark was already there, reviewing something for the Schmidt case.

"Morning, buddy," Mark said as Jeff entered. Jeff eyed his friend critically: was Mark's joviality a little more forced than usual? Was he acting aggressively chill and relaxed? Had Sheila told him about the incident at reception?

"Morning."

"Laser Lotus is on hold, obviously, but there's still Schmidt, and Melanie has a super messy divorce, Robin and Pat Ferguson… okay, what's up?"

"Hmm?" Jeff sipped his coffee (drip coffee brewed in a k-cup machine like some kind of peasant, it was amazing how quickly he'd gotten used to daily Starbucks again) nonchalantly.

"You're doing that nonchalant thing where you're about to throw a fit or have a breakdown or something," Mark observed.

 _See? Mark would agree with me!_ Imaginary Annie declared, pointing triumphantly at him.

"I don't know what you mean." Jeff tried a little harder to look casual.

"What's up?" Mark asked. "You break and tell Annie about Pierce Hawthorne?"

"What? No. No, no." Jeff glanced down at the phone in his hand, then looked Mark in the eye. "I need to send someone several hundred dollars' worth of flowers, delivered to her desk or at least reception in her office, and I need them to get there soon. In the next hour."

Mark lit up like a child on Christmas morning. "For Annie? What am I saying, of course for Annie. That's great! And you came to the right guy, buddy! I know exactly who to call."

Jeff was already beginning to regret asking him. "I'm not talking cheese clock, or anything else that's… you know, a uniquely Mark way of expressing affection," he cautioned. "Just flowers. Regular flowers. Lots and lots of them. Lots."

"I hear you, buddy." Mark nodded emphatically. "It's cool. You start off slow, you build up to the cheese clock."

"Yeah, okay. But no cheese."

"Sure, sure. I mean, you really ought to send a flower clock before the cheese clock, so she has an idea of what's going on…"

"No clocks of any kind!"

"Of course not. I hear you." Mark was already dialing on his landline. "Don't worry, I got this. Trust me."

Jeff tried to calm himself down. "You've never steered me wrong," he said slowly. "At least, on those occasions when I didn't disregard your advice. Which have been many, and usually for good reason. But when I trust you, I trust you." He sighed. "I trust you."

"Means a lot, Jeff, thanks… hello? Evan? It's Mark. I need a rush job…" While Mark negotiated with his florist on Jeff's behalf, Jeff noticed his phone still claimed he had unread texts from Annie. It took him a little while to figure it out; he scrolled up and saw that her flood of texts timestamped 7:14 had knocked off a message sent at 7:10:

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0710:**

 **[Heart emoji] So Pierce is in Squantum, huh? [Kiss emoji]**

 **(I had to look it up it's a suburb on the other side of the city)**

 **(But you knew that?) [Raised eyebrow emoji] [flower emoji] [kiss emoji]**

* * *

"Huh," Jeff said aloud.

 _Okay, first, notice how I couched the whole thing in affectionate emojis, so obviously I'm not mad. Second, this is Mark's office, it's a safe space if you need to freak out…_

He was okay, though. Compared to the other thing, this was nothing. "Mark?" Jeff called, snapping his fingers when Mark didn't look up immediately.

"Yeah chief?"

"Whatever amount of money you think is appropriate to spend on flowers…"

"Heh, yeah, don't worry about—"

"Whatever amount you think is right, add a hundred bucks to it, okay?"

Mark nodded. "Check. Oh, what's her favorite color?"

* * *

Friday afternoon Annie's supervisor noticed something different about her workspace. "Are you a celebrity who just had surgery?" David asked, when he saw the two vases of flowers on her desk were accompanied by four more on the floor, two on either side flanking her chair. Purple roses and hydrangea, lilacs and lavender tulips. The two biggest arrangements looked too large for Annie to carry easily. "Are these for a wedding, or a funeral?"

Annie grinned, full of the self-satisfaction of someone who'd been fielding similar questions all day. "I have a new boyfriend."

"Oh, congratulations… is he a florist?" He eyed the arrangements and tried to guess the cost. Hundreds, definitely…

Annie practically bounced in her seat. "No. Jeff's a lawyer. We've known each other for a while — I knew him in Colorado — but now we're out here and everything's different and it's amazing and there's… I'm sorry, you didn't ask about all that."

"It's fine," David said mildly. "He follow you out here, or…?"

"No. Kind of? Not really." Annie's grin might have gotten wider, if that had been possible — David wasn't sure it was.

"Well, great," he said, amused by her clear excitement, and tried to figure out why today, in particular, Annie's Jeff would decide to spend diamond-jewelry money on flowers. "Is it, uh, is it your birthday?"

She let out a little snort of laughter that suggested she'd understood his implied question. "No, no, he's just—" Annie stopped, to let out another little laugh. "He's really extravagant!"

"Uh huh," David said, nonplussed. "Well, congratulations again, I suppose."

"Don't worry, I won't leave these here, I know it's a distraction—"

"Hm? Oh, ah. Yes. Very good. You should make him help you carry these big ones downstairs." David nudged one of the large arrangements with his foot.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1147:**

 **I can explain about Pierce**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1220:**

 **I'm sure you can! [Smiling face emoji]**

 **Thank you for the flowers [kiss emoji] [heart emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1222:**

 **You're welcome!**

 **Glad you liked them**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1223:**

 **Although I will need you to help me get them home.**

 **There's a lot**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1223:**

 **?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1224:**

 **Did you just tell the florist 'I need $500 worth of [purple flower emoji]!'?**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1225:**

 **Basically yes? [Heart emoji][oversized grin emoji]**


	28. Circumstances Kept Us Apart

By unspoken agreement Jeff met Annie at her work. Neither was sure whose idea it had been, but it only seemed fair, after she'd been to his office twice. He passed through the building security and found the elevator and the correct floor and she had to come out to meet him, or maybe she didn't have to but she did. That she wanted to kiss him, and she didn't want to kiss him where any of her coworkers could see, might also have been a factor.

"Okay, I get what you were saying," Jeff said when he saw the flowers he'd bought her. "In my defense, it was Mark who actually talked to the florist. I just said purple and named a figure. He might have shown me a picture of that arrangement," Jeff pointed at one of the two vases on Annie's desk. "On his computer? But I did not realize how much floral decoration I was buying."

"You really know how to make a romantic gesture seem even more romantic," Annie said drily. "You're lucky I'm so nuts about you."

Annie could carry most of the vases, but the two largest ones were beyond her. They ended up taking multiple trips down to street level. Jeff carried one of the heavy vases and Annie a lighter one out to the elevator, then they left the flowers in the lobby and returned to fetch two more. Then Annie went back up to her office and picked up the fifth of the six vases (she was leaving one of them on her desk, though it might have become wilted by Monday) and brought it down, while Jeff walked to his parking spot and drove back in his car. Packing the heavy vases into the back of Jeff's battered Lexus was done as quickly as possible, while double-parked. As they drove back to Annie's apartment in Somerville, it looked from the outside like the back seat of Jeff's car had been ground zero of an invasion by the Flower People of the Purple Dimension.

Wrestling the vases up two flights of stairs into Annie and Vicki's apartment was even less fun than Jeff had expected it to be, but Annie was suitably appreciative and she had no qualms about kissing him in the privacy of her own home, so all in all, it worked out.

"Pierce," Annie said (eventually, when they were ready to use their mouths for talking).

"Pierce, yeah." Jeff cleared his throat. They were lounging on the same sofa they'd cuddled on the night before, Annie half in his lap (this new thing where Annie was half on top of him as often as possible was a thing that Jeff heartily approved of). "I wasn't going to tell you on the grounds that if you knew he was alive, you might be culpable in some way that could jeopardize your career, and also Will seems to think that he can set up some scheme for you to inherit the bulk of Pierce's unclaimed estate."

Annie looked at him, arms folded.

"And I knew you'd find out sooner or later, you being you. Probably sooner." He sighed. "I admit, though, less than a day, that's pretty impressive… I was expecting to have a few days to figure something out."

Annie continued to stare at him, eyebrows slightly raised.

"I don't know what I was going to try… ugh. Is this going to be a new thing, where you've gotten tired of telling me what do, so now you're just going to look at me?"

Annie tilted her head forward slightly, stare not wavering.

Jeff threw his head back. "All right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I should have told you last night."

"Yeah, you should have!" she cried. "I mean, when I found out my first thought was that you and Pierce had been in cahoots this whole time. Then I thought, no, Jeff wouldn't do that to me, not Jeff Winger. He must have just found out yesterday, and he must have some good reason… do you know how I found out?"

"Tobacco ash on my jacket sleeve? Dog not barking when he should have?" Jeff asked with a slightly anxious smile.

"Ha ha. I found out this morning when my stalker tried to drive a wedge between us with photos of you and Pierce."

Jeff did a double take and sat up straighter. "What?"

"Yeah, I have a stalker," Annie declared, amused by Jeff's reaction. She tossed her shoulders back. "I go on my first date in I don't know how long, the guy turns out to be a spy for Pierce who gave that up to stalk me."

"You don't seem very concerned…"

"He's really, I don't know, nebbishy? And his stalking was kind of half-hearted, anyway. I don't think I need to worry about him sending me dead cats in the mail or harassing me online or following me around Boston. If something happens I'll let you know. I'll let you know the same day."

"Okay… you went on a date with this guy?" Jeff thought back to the text messages he'd received that morning.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0714:**

 **You know I have a date**

 **I was trying to pretend I was excited about it**

 **I didn't get coffee this morning because I don't want to see him**

* * *

"I was trying to move on from you." A guilty expression briefly crossed Annie's face. "And you'd disappeared on me —"

"This was the coffee guy, I guess?"

"How do you know that?" Annie's eyes widened, as she began to construct a scenario in which Jeff had discussed Joe Brown with Pierce. Talking to Pierce was one thing, talking to Pierce about her was something else.

Jeff frowned, nonplussed by her surprise. "You sent me some texts about it." He took out his phone, and pointed to it.

"What? I didn't." Annie shook her head slowly, not understanding.

"You did. Uh, here." He handed her his phone, already open to the long series of texts she'd sent him.

As Annie read them, she felt her cheeks grow hot. Merging New Number Jeff and Old Number Jeff on her phone's list of contacts had had unforeseen consequences.

"You didn't do that on purpose," Jeff said, realizing.

"I did not." Annie sat up from where she'd draped herself over him, mostly disentangling herself, and stared down at the floor.

Jeff gripped her right shoulder. "I thought you…" He trailed off, unsure how to proceed. "After last night, I thought you must have wanted me to see them, so I'd know… I'm really sorry to have done that to you."

"It's okay," she said quietly.

He scowled. "It's not — I mean, I never wanted to hurt you. I knew that it would bother you, but I didn't think you'd take it so hard. I didn't think you'd care that much."

Annie closed her eyes and took a breath before opening them again. "It's okay." She reached her free arm across and squeezed his hand on her shoulder.

"And we talked about it the other day, and I knew that it had bothered you more than I'd assumed, but…"

"I did not do a particularly good job of moving on from you," Annie said. "And now we're here, so, that's the situation. And we were talking about Pierce!"

Jeff shifted in his seat and tried to clear his head. "Right, yes. Pierce."

"Piercinald Anastasia Hawthorne," Annie said, in the tone of one writing a major debate topic on a whiteboard.

"Okay. I met him yesterday—" Jeff broke off suddenly, chuckling. "Oh, man, I forgot Pierce's middle name is Anastasia."

"That's what it says on his file." Annie nodded. "Go on."

"File? What file?" For a moment Jeff assumed Annie meant Pierce's transcripts from Greendale, but that made no sense.

"Oh!" Annie realized she hadn't shown Jeff the file David have given her. "Pierce was under investigation when he died. Tax fraud. The case is pretty sketchy…" She picked up her purse from the floor and retrieved the file out of it. "I'm kind of surprised we never heard about it at the time, since we were named in his will."

Jeff accepted the file from her. "When Will came into the office — I emailed Will, told him we'd found the tapes, and he rushed into the office, he hadn't been in all week," he said as he leafed through the file. "When Will came into the office, I sat him down and he admitted Pierce was alive and that he was having to jury-rig all this treasure-hunt stuff because Pierce is bad at planning. I wasn't sure I believed him until Will called Pierce up and we got him on the phone. Will was drinking pretty heavily," Jeff recalled. "Kind of weird to be watching someone else get drunk at ten in the morning."

Annie snorted.

"We went to Pierce's house, in Squantum, yeah. Fifteen minutes south of the city…" Jeff outlined the details of the meeting quickly: Pierce was alive, Pierce wasn't especially surprised to see him, Pierce had been screwing with him intermittently since well before they'd left Greendale. Pierce didn't have as much of a plan as his VHS tapes suggested, but he was enjoying his fugitive status. "He's never felt more alive, he said."

Annie rolled her eyes. "Did he mention Joe Brown — um, Joseph Braunschweig? The stalker guy?"

Jeff shook his head. "I asked what his plan was for you, and he dodged the question… Will and Mark and I pointed out that conspiring with a fugitive might damage your career goals… He said he'd figure something out, and kicked us out right after."

"Can we call him?" she asked.

Jeff shook his head again. "He wouldn't give me his number. Will wouldn't, either. But he still has yours, so…?"

She perked up, an idea striking her. "How about his house? Do you remember the address? Can you get us there? Let's drive over and pay Mr. Hawthorne a visit!"

"Right now?"

"Yeah, right now! What, you had something else you wanted to do?"

Jeff smiled at her.

Annie blushed. "There'll be time enough for that later," she said primly, as though she wasn't strongly tempted to just chuck any plan that required leaving her apartment for any reason besides relocating to Jeff's (where Vicki was less likely to be bothered by any noise they made). "Come on! Edison and Winger, on the case!"

* * *

"You're sure this is it?" Annie asked for the third time.

Jeff nodded grimly.

"Because it doesn't look much like the photos that my stalker showed me. That house had, you know, doors."

"This is it. I texted myself the address when Will gave it to Mark, yesterday for the GPS, see?" He brandished his phone at her.

"I hope he's okay," Annie said as she paced around the yard.

Pierce's house — the house Jeff had met him in, at least — was mostly gone, replaced by ashes and scorched timbers. The building's exterior walls and roof were still largely intact, but the doors and windows were all gone, either from the fire or by act of the firefighters. Within, everything was blackened. A single yellow stripe of police tape circled the house and property, the only clear sign any authorities had been made aware of the destruction.

"I'm sure he is," Jeff said. He examined the house, poring over every detail. "There was a car in the garage yesterday; it's gone now. And there's no sign of the fire jumping over to neighbors' houses. My guess is arson. He got spooked from our meeting, lit the place up to cover his tracks, and drove off."

"Maybe," Annie said doubtfully. She wondered, briefly, if their foot-dragging leaving her apartment had caused them to miss the fire. There was no time for love when doings were transpiring. But the ashes were cold, so probably the fire was out long before she'd even learned Pierce had been there. She turned to Jeff, about to express this thought, when the sudden appearance of a stranger gave her pause.

"Can I help you?" The man was certainly over sixty, probably over seventy: thin, bald, a head that reminded Annie, incongruously, of Tweety Bird. His tone was far less friendly than his solicitous words might have implied.

"You know what happened?" Jeff asked, before she could. "The man who was staying here was a friend of ours."

"Hmmph." The retiree narrowed his eyes, looking first at Jeff and then at Annie, as though he suspected them to be part of the same crime-gang that had burned up the house. "You're Troy Winger's friends, huh?"

" 'Friends' is kind of an exaggeration," Annie said smoothly. She sized up the stranger as living either across the street or in one of the houses next door. Pierce's neighbor, either way, and knowing Pierce, he hadn't endeared himself to the locals. The little house was tucked away from the main road, deep in a quiet residential area populated by, Annie guessed from the state of their yards, mostly the elderly and the elderly at heart. This guy would be more inclined to help them if he didn't think they meant Pierce well. "He owes my husband money," she added, guessing the old man was probably conservative and would be better-disposed towards a couple than to an unmatched pair of strangers. She would have liked to have intimated that she was four or so months pregnant, not yet showing, but that probably would have been gilding the lily.

Her lie worked: the retiree raised his eyebrows and relaxed his stance slightly. "Yeah?" he asked Jeff.

Annie bristled instinctively at the stranger's presumption that Jeff was the one to talk to, but hid it. She was, simultaneously, pleased at the way Jeff hadn't flinched or shot her a panicked look, when she'd declared them married. "Me and a bunch of other guys," he said in a tone of commiseration. "Claimed he could double our retirement savings in ten years. He talked a good game, took the money and ran. We've been chasing him for a couple of years now, off and on."

"Christ," the retiree said, impressed despite himself. "Doesn't surprise me. I told Patsy he was trouble."

"Patsy's your wife?" Annie asked him.

"Yeah…" He indicated the house across the street from Pierce's with a tilt of his head. "She saw you out here, sent me out to see what you were up to. Larry," he said, extending a hand for Jeff to shake.

"Jeff," said Jeff, "and this is my wife Annie."

As Larry nodded, Jeff and Annie exchanged another pair of meaningful glances, this one with a very different subtext.

"We're newlyweds," Annie informed Larry, just in case he thought it odd that they were giving one another smoldering looks.

"Oh, heh." Larry nodded slightly, as though some suspicion of his had been confirmed. "Congratulations."

"So obviously we missed Winger, but what happened, exactly?" Jeff asked.

Larry chuckled. "Damn fool drove off with his oven leaking gas, or something. He was probably drunk or worse — he was shouting about how sick he was of the neighborhood, when he was loading up his car." He snorted. "Doesn't surprise me to hear he was a, whatchacallit, a shyster? Grifter. You should talk to the police. They were here right after the fire trucks. Fire academy's just over there," he added, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "Good thing, or he'd have set the whole town on fire, probably. Dumbass."

"He definitely wasn't here when the fire started?" Annie felt a sense of relief. Not that she'd been worried, but if she was going to pick a member of the Greendale Seven most likely to accidentally light themselves on fire… well, it was a tight race between Pierce and Troy…

Larry shook his head no. "We should be so lucky."

"Well, that's good to know. You know how long he was staying in that house?" Jeff asked. "Did he own, or rent, or…?"

The older man shrugged. "You'd have to ask Evelyn, it's her house. She's down in Florida now, don't know how Winger came to be living there. He didn't say and I didn't ask. Patsy might know. You want to come in, get some coffee?"

* * *

Larry and Patsy's house looked, to Jeff's eye, like what happened when Mary Engelbreit and Thomas Kinkade got drunk together and decided to do some interior decorating. Pink striped wallpaper that might have been in fashion for an hour thirty years ago; cross-stitch samplers advising visitors to take their shoes off, relax, and also be so kind as to leave the toilet seat down; an enormous old CRT television muted and tuned to a particularly grainy iteration of Fox News. The only incongruous element was a gaming console two generations old, which Jeff guessed had belonged to the grandchildren whose baby pictures covered every available surface. Patsy, a little old lady right out of central casting, beamed when Larry led in Jeff and Annie. "They're all right after all," he said. "Newlyweds. Mr. Winger stole their money."

"Oh, that's lovely. Welcome to our home! Coffee? We have tea, or decaf — there should be some tonic in the outside refrigerator —"

"I can run to the store," Larry offered.

Patsy nodded. "Larry can run to the store if you want juice, we don't keep it on hand… the sugar, you know. Although we do still have some Tom Collins mix left over from last Sunday, I think. Larry, where'd you hide the gin?"

"Don't look at me!" Larry shot Jeff a commiserating look, which he tried to return in kind.

Annie cleared her throat. "Decaf would be wonderful, thanks," she said, sitting on the sofa. She glanced at Jeff, as if wondering whether he'd follow her lead, or ask for a margarita.

Jeff sat down next to Annie, casually giving her knee a squeeze. "Decaf, sure," he said.

"I'll just make a fresh pot," Larry announced, and hurried off, presumably in the direction of the kitchen.

"Well! Lovely to meet you," Patsy said, as she sat down in a worn, doily-covered armchair. "Mister…?"

"Edison," Jeff said, because Pierce had stolen his last name. "But please, call me Jeff."

"Annie Edison," said Annie. She was smiling broadly, probably because of his choice of surname. "Anything you could tell us about Troy Winger would be a huge help."

"Of course… ugh, that man." Patsy shook her head. "Horrible neighbor. Never brought his garbage down to the street, so it'd pile up and make a huge mess… you can see what he did to Evelyn's lawn. I shudder to think what the inside must be like. Filthy, I'm sure."

"Did he have a lot of guests? Loud visitors, music?" Jeff asked, more because it was stereotypical bad-neighbor behavior than because he expected Pierce to have been hosting house parties.

"Oh, he had people over all the time. Every week there'd be some car or other parked in the driveway. Can't imagine what they were doing over there. Evelyn would be heartbroken if she knew, I'm sure — oh, poor Evelyn, I wonder if anyone's told her about the fire. I should call her."

"Evelyn is — was — Winger's landlady?" Annie asked, with an extra contemptuous spin on 'Winger.'

Patsy nodded. "She's down in Florida now. I have her number somewhere…" Patsy shrugged, as if to indicate helplessness in the face of an impossible task like finding Evelyn's contact information. "Mr. Winger moved into the house after it had been vacant for a few months. This was, oh, a year and a half ago, I think? February of 2013. No, it was 2014. We had him over when he moved in, of course. Said he was writing a book and came out here for the peace and quiet, which I could tell was a lie. He also said he was staying only until the spring thaw, when Evelyn would be back. But instead she stayed in Florida longer and he stayed here."

"Someone should call Evelyn, tell her about the fire," Larry said as he entered, holding two coffee mugs. He sat in another worn armchair, first setting the mugs down on the coffee table in front of Jeff and Annie.

"I was just saying that," Patsy agreed. "I've spoken with Evelyn a few times since Winger — Mr. Winger — moved in," she confided in Jeff and Annie. "Letting him know what a terrible tenant he is. I'm sure it is filthy inside that house. Was filthy, I suppose, now. Terrible shame." It wasn't clear which Patsy thought was worse, the presumed filth of Pierce's home or the fire that had gutted it.

Jeff nodded. "Yeah. I was in the house yesterday. It definitely was not clean." In fact the filth of the house, or the lack thereof, hadn't made any impression on Jeff one way or another. An anti-Pierce testimonial was plainly what Patsy wanted to hear, however.

She smiled, gratified, but then a confused expression crossed her face. "You were in the house yesterday? You met Mr. Winger? I thought you were looking for him…?"

"I'm confused," complained Larry.

"He was staking the place out," Annie explained. She patted Jeff's thigh affectionately. "Jeff's gotten a shave and a haircut and a new suit since 'Mr. Winger' met him, so… you thought you could meet him under false pretenses and get information, isn't that right, sweetie?"

Jeff suppressed the urge to glower. "That's right," he told Annie, a fixed smile on his face, "honeybuns."

Patsy let out a sort of happy sigh, hearing the nickname.

"I thought I'd managed to avoid arousing suspicions, darling, but I guess he saw through me after all," Jeff continued.

"Well, I don't think you could have foreseen arson," Annie said, her smile matching his. "My love."

"Oh, you two are adorable," said Patsy. "Just the picture of young love."

"I'm actually forty-one," Jeff said automatically (one of the books he'd read during and after his hospital stay had directed him to correct anyone who assumed he was a younger man). Then he winced — they were supposed to be a wholesome young couple, that was the cover story they'd silently agreed to outside, with Larry. Jeff robbing the cradle ran counter to that purpose.

Seeing Patsy and Larry both raise eyebrows, Annie broke in. "But he's very well-preserved, don't you agree?" She patted Jeff's leg again. "Though, seeing the two of you, I'm reminded that youth is fleeting. For Jeff, me, everybody." Annie cleared her throat as she realized that what she'd just said could easily be interpreted as an insult. "I mean, someday we'll both be old and withered, me and Jeff both, and when that occurs I will love him no less than I do now."

Annie had, perhaps, said too many words too quickly and too borderline-insultingly to put Patsy and Larry at their ease, but she succeeded, at least, shifting their attention away from Jeff long enough for him to compose himself. "That's, uh, sweet," said Patsy dubiously.

"That's my wife, she's a sweetheart," Jeff said, throwing an arm around Annie. "But we need to get going. Can you give us the landlady's contact information?"

"Oh, I suppose. I'm sure I have it somewhere," said Patsy doubtfully.

"Don't trouble yourself," Annie told her. "We'll talk to the police and I'm sure they have it."

"Really? It's no trouble," Patsy said, insincerity dripping from her tone. "I think it's in my kitten address book, the one in the attic…"

"No, no, it's fine." Annie shook her head.

"Well, then." Patsy leaned forward in her armchair. "Tell me," she asked Annie, "where are your wedding rings, dear?"

Annie's nostrils flared slightly — anyone who hadn't spent literal years staring at her face wouldn't have noticed — but it was enough to prompt Jeff to jump in. "Safe at home in Colorado. Annie's paranoid about losing them somehow when we travel."

"Well, they're very precious to me," Annie said self-consciously. "And you hear stories about them slipping off and falling down grates…" She looked at Jeff with eyes that seemed too large for her head. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to that ring."

Jeff smiled at her.

Patsy cleared her throat. "You two are just adorable, you know that? Adorable! How did you meet?"

"College." Annie grinned, remembering. "Jeff loved me from practically the moment we met, but circumstances kept us apart for a while." She winked at him.

"You're a professor?" guessed Larry.

Jeff would have happily accepted that guess, but Annie laughed. "No, no, he was a nontraditional student. Going back to school, finally getting his degree…"

"Good for you," Patsy declared. "Education's so important! When you have kids — if you have kids — you make sure they go to school," she instructed them. "I never went to college, and I think it really held me back in life."

Larry caught Jeff's gaze, and rolled his eyes.

"Even Mr. Winger's kid went to college. I mean, community college, but still," Patsy continued.

"Winger's kid?" repeated Annie.

"Last time I spoke to him, oh a month ago? He was all excited because he'd finally talked his son and daughter-in-law — or daughter and son-in-law? I don't remember — into moving up here from, oh, Kansas or Nebraska or someplace. Oh!" Patsy was struck with an idea. "You should talk to them! I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to get in touch with them…"

Annie stood up — Jeff could tell that this latest revelation had been one too many for her, and she was ready to go before she said something she'd regret. He rose as well. "Yeah, they're on the list, thanks. And thanks for the coffee. It was so nice meeting you," Jeff said. "But we really need to be going."

"Oh, of course," Patsy said, visibly disappointed that they were leaving so soon.

"So good to meet you," Annie said distractedly, briefly taking Patsy's hand as Jeff shook hands with a bewildered Larry.

Jeff fought the urge to break into a run as soon as they were moving towards the door. One step, two steps, out the door…

Annie paused in the doorway and turned to regard Patsy and Larry one last time. "Daughter and son-in-law," she said solemnly. "We'll be talking to them next."

* * *

Once they were back in Jeff's car, Annie let out a long breath of air. "Okay, that was fun. That was fun. When's the last time we did something like that?"

"That?" Jeff chuckled. "That was nothing."

"I know, I know. It's just… it was fun!" She smiled and stared out the window, remembering the antics of years past.

Jeff cleared his throat. "You probably did not need to pretend we were married," he said, as if he hadn't immediately gone along with the plot.

"You saw those cross-stitch samplers, Jeff, those people would not have been so forthcoming if they'd thought we were just some casual couple, sinning it up all over the place. And I could have said I was pregnant, for extra sympathy points —"

"What?" Jeff let out a nervous chuckle. "I mean, pretending to be Pierce's creditors is one thing, but —"

She laughed a little at his response. "Don't worry, I'm not trying to send you subconscious signals. It worked fine as it was," Annie said, letting a slight edge of condescension creep into her tone. She knew he liked it when she was smug.

And indeed, his smile immediately became warmer. "Yeah." Jeff leaned over a little in the driver's seat. It occurred to Annie that if she leaned over herself to match him, then their lips would be in kissing range. The kick as her pulse quickened at this revelation surprised her, on some level; she and Jeff had kissed a bunch of times in the last week and she expected they would kiss many, many more times in the future. But after so many years of seeing him guarded, for Jeff to be so _available_ , for want of a better word, hit her afresh every time she noticed it. This wasn't a fantasy, this wasn't her projecting, this wasn't all in her imagination. When they finished this classic Annie-and-Jeff mess-around, hunting Pierce, they wouldn't share an awkward moment that ended with him patting her on the head, they'd go back to his apartment, together. Just thinking about it made her vibrate with glee, a little bit.

She realized suddenly that she and Jeff had been staring at each other for a few seconds now, and he was still leaning over, but if she didn't take action he'd probably think she didn't want to — Annie reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling herself closer to him. And then she was kissing him and he was kissing her and you'd think the novelty of that might have worn off by now but no, kissing Jeff Winger was still as wonderful as ever, and she was nineteen and they were on the school steps surrounded by Christmas lights again, for a little while anyway.

Eventually they paused the kiss — at this point they never really _stopped_ kissing, they just paused and unpaused — and grinned a little and his hand had started casually petting her, inside her coat.

"Okay, back to the matter at hand — Jeff!" Annie protested, laughing, as he gave her a slight squeeze.

"Right, yes." Jeff straightened up in his seat, facing out the windshield, hands once more at ten and two o'clock. "So we need to find Pierce' landlady, which I'm sure will be simple, because how many Evelyns can there be in the state of Florida? It's only got twenty-five electoral votes, after all—"

"Twenty-nine," Annie corrected.

Jeff balked. "Really?"

"It was twenty-five in the 2000 election, that's what you're probably thinking of." Annie had turned ten during the 2000 election; it was the first election she'd known enough to pay any kind of attention to. It occurred to her that Jeff would have been twenty-six that year; not only would he have voted in it, but it wasn't even his first time. That would have been 1992, or 1996 maybe if he hadn't been prompt about registering. "But we know she owns that house. I can look it up online. Later."

"And Russ might know something," Jeff mused. "We can call him, go talk to him tomorrow. He was saying he wanted to see us this weekend."

"Yeah, definitely." Annie smiled. "And there's Pierce's daughter and son-in-law to question."

Jeff chuckled. "Probably that was a reference to Troy and Abed."

"Probably," she agreed. "But right now we should get dinner."

"Absolutely."

They lapsed into a brief silence while Jeff drove them out of Squantum and back towards the city.

"Something you said to the old couple," he began, with the careful intonations of someone who'd run through what they were going to say in their head several times before actually saying it.

"Yeah?" Annie kept her tone light.

"That when I'm old and withered… more old and withered than now, that you'd still love me." Jeff kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.

"Um, yeah." Annie looked away from Jeff. The l-word was a delicate issue. Back when they were just two of the Greendale Seven, more than once they'd each professed love for the other. Annie had declared her love for Jeff… and Abed and Troy and Shirley and Pierce and even Britta. And Jeff had done the same. But those were dramatically different circumstances, and while she certainly had love feelings for Jeff, Annie wasn't sure they'd reached a stage in their relationship where they were ready to use the word in this new context. Greendale was over and done with; they were doing the next thing, now.

"I am going to be old and withered someday," Jeff said quietly. "A lot sooner than you, no matter how much skin cream I use or how few carbs I eat or how much time I spend in the gym."

This wasn't where Annie had been expecting him to go. "Jeff?"

"And it's kind of a bait and switch, I know, because I do put a lot of care into my appearance, and I can think of a half-dozen times we came up with some pretty flimsy excuses for me to take my shirt off in front of you…" His voice wavered, very slightly.

"Jeff, you don't need to worry about that," Annie assured him, because she didn't think he would be receptive to her making a joke just then. "I mean, yes, I think the last couple of nights have confirmed that your body is my favorite new toy…" She shot him a sidelong glance, hoping he'd crack a smile. He didn't. "But seriously, it's not about what you look like. I'm not that shallow, you know."

"I know."

"And it's nice that you're as appreciative of me and my body as you are, but I know that, you know, you aren't going to dump me for a fresh eighteen-year-old in a few years. At least I'm pretty sure…?"

"Of course not!" Jeff snorted derisively at the thought.

"So you see, you don't need to worry. I know that me saying that doesn't magically make you stop worrying, but…"

"No, no, I appreciate it."

Annie reached over, squeezed his knee. "It's okay. And it'll be okay."

Jeff nodded, an embarrassed little smile on his face, but said nothing more.


	29. Until They Die of Dehydration

Saturday morning they began investigating in earnest.

"Jeff! Annie! My two favorite people!" Borchert cried when he saw them. He leaped up from his desk (knocking over the chair he'd been sitting in) and crossed his small office in a single bound, to embrace them both. "Group hug! Neither of you are Vicki, right? Of course not!"

"Hi," said Annie, only a little put off by the hug.

"Good morning, sir," Jeff said, patting him on the back for a moment before forcibly disengaging Borchert from both himself and Annie. "You seem to be in a good mood."

"I've been following up on what you said the other day, about how I needed to familiarize myself with the shifting media landscape?"

Annie squinted. "I don't remember either of us saying that."

"Yes, just so. Did you know there are over five hundred new episodes of _Star Trek_? Three different series that ran for seven seasons each! I come from an impoverished era, where we had to make do with eighty lousy episodes of what people so charmingly dub 'the original series.' The future is an amazing place!"

"It is," Jeff agreed.

"Although NASA's just been sitting on their hands this whole time… oh, and the Soviet Union no longer exists! You'd think I'd have heard about that pretty much immediately, but it's old hat to you people. Didn't come up for months. Berlin wall, pfft! Gone!"

Annie nodded. "That happened a year before I was born."

Borchert chortled, then peered at Annie, his expression falling suddenly. "I've become an old man." He sighed. "Jeff, you were alive when I went into the bunker, weren't you?"

Jeff was a little taken aback by the question. "Um, I was a toddler, I think, but yeah."

"Well, life goes on." Borchert shook his head sadly. Then he clapped his hands together and was the same energetic eccentric they'd known. "What can I do for you kids?"

"Couple of things," Annie said. "One, you need to come clean about Pierce Hawthorne."

Borchert chuckled. "I told you, I don't know —"

"Two, how did you know to contact me? What's your goal with this research? Does the OHRP know you're conducting experiments involving human subjects? Shouldn't we have to sign a wavier? Et cetera!" she cried with a flourish.

Jeff nodded. "That's about it."

"The OHRP?" Borchert asked Annie, baffled.

"The Office for Human Research Protections," she replied firmly. "I looked it up online, I figured there had to be some regulatory body, so, here we are."

"I'm pretty sure I've explained all this," Borchert said as he played nervously with his shirt collar (the first time Annie had ever seen anyone make this gesture without a trace of irony). "It's science stuff, I told her it was science stuff, that's all she needs to know, I mean it's not like she wants me to walk her through all the code, that'd be crazy, you don't want to be crazy, Russ, come on, don't be an idiot, oh, they're looking at me like I'm supposed to say something. Is this an awkward pause? I bet if I keep quiet like this it will eventually be awkward. I feel awkward now, but of course that doesn't mean anything. There's two of them so where am I supposed to look? His eyes? Her eyes? Her breasts?"

Jeff opened his mouth to object, but Annie grabbed his arm before he could speak. She shot him a look that successfully conveyed _he might say something useful_ , and Jeff nodded reluctantly.

Borchert continued his stream-of-consciousness rant. "Obviously not her breasts, Russ, you idiot, now you're just talking crazy. Although she is very pretty, I mean, I'm not made of stone, but then, you know what Scarlett said about these two. May as well try to split up Gollum and the One Ring. Heh, there's a reference I'm sure no one gets, those books came out when you were a kid, probably forgotten now. Doesn't matter. Got to be nice or they won't let me finish the scans. Plus they're nice kids, got kind of a May-September thing going on, or June-August maybe, but now I'm drifting. Focus, Russ, focus! Just get the data and then we'll all be rich and the world will be a better place. How long have we all been standing here silently? Is this something people do now? Is this what texting is? Am I supposed to have a pocket tele-puter out?"

"That's enough. Dr. Borchert," Jeff broke in. "Russ? You're speaking out loud."

"What?" Borchert's eyes widened. "Oh God, did you say the part about Gollum and the Ring out loud? Why would you do that Russ, what young lady wants to be compared to Gollum? It's okay, man, don't panic, it's an obscure reference and maybe you didn't say that part out loud."

"Okay, great." Annie clapped her hands together, jarring Borchert the rest of the way out of his reverie. "How about we sit down and you answer some of our questions? Then maybe — maybe! — we can do the rest of the scanning, all right?"

"Oh, all right," Borchert said uncertainly. He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. "Have a seat, no, that won't work, there's two of them. She could sit in his lap, of course, but they probably don't —"

"I'll just grab a chair from next door," Jeff interjected, and did so.

"They might not even be together yet," Borchert mused as he, Jeff, and Annie all sat down. "They weren't before. Scarlett was certain, but even so, these things take time…"

Jeff and Annie exchanged a meaningful look. "Russ, there are several relevant questions you can answer for us," Jeff said, with the genteel authority he occasionally used during depositions or witness interviews. "Let's start with the most basic: why have you been so eager to collect data from me and Annie?"

"Science stuff, I told you —"

"Can you be a little more specific?" Jeff let a faint hint of irritation slip into his tone, less a signifier of actual annoyance than a hint to Borchert that he was disappointing them.

"Right, sorry," Borchert said apologetically. "You're the only other person who ever triggered a response from Raquel. Not that very many people tried. I mean, we were down in the bunker for years, but still. I knew you could generate an emotional spike that Raquel could pick up, and that made you an ideal candidate for Scarlett. Most people don't feel so fervently, you know."

Jeff shifted uncomfortably, as Annie smiled and put a hand on his arm.

Borchert didn't notice. "I'm told antidepressants are much more common nowadays, maybe that's why, or maybe it's something to do with airline deregulation — have you tried to ride in an airplane? It's hellish!"

"Getting off topic," Jeff said tightly.

"Sorry, sorry. You showed up at the lab, and I thought it was kismet, you know, just when I needed a better test subject than the grad students here. And then Scarlett was very responsive! Far exceeding my expectations! I mean, that alone moves the timetable up at least a year, we're talking Christmas of 2018 maybe…"

"Timetable?" Annie asked.

"For the product launch," Borchert said in a tone that suggested he thought he was explaining something.

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," Jeff said doggedly. "When you had my spine clamped, you asked me some probing questions, about… about Annie."

Borchert nodded.

Jeff waited a few seconds for him to elaborate before giving up. "Why?"

"Oh, part of the calibration. Scarlett was picking up that you were — are — well, I don't want to say 'obsessed' —"

Jeff reddened. At the same time, Annie let out a little squeak but mostly kept a straight face. She gave Jeff's arm a reassuring squeeze.

"Okay, so," Jeff said quickly, because if Annie tried to talk she'd probably explode, "you reached out to Annie —"

"Yes!" Annie cried in a joyful tone wholly disproportionate to the declaration. "You did!"

Jeff forced himself to continue the questioning. "How did you know she was in the city?"

Borchert shrugged. "I called the college, asking for your contact information. Woman didn't want to give it to me, but eventually she did when she found out I was technically her boss. Then I realized I had your computo-phone's audio-call number stored in _my_ handbrain's memory—"

"We call them smartphones," Annie said, still grinning broadly.

"So it was easy to call you," Borchert said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Then you clamped Annie's spine and asked her a lot of the same questions," Jeff said.

"Mmm-hmm. I did, yeah," Borchert agreed.

"Why?"

"Oh, you know. Scarlett didn't get your phone number or bank account information out of your head, don't worry about that, Jeff, she just gleaned that you're really deep-level devoted to this one." Borchert indicated Annie with a slight turn of his head. "I recognized her from the bunker — I recognized you from the bunker," he said, turning to her. "I thought, regardless of how you feel about him, having data on the pair of you, the relationship… it would help with the product. Which it did. Is. Will? Whichever. Time is a flat circle."

"And what is this product—" Annie started to ask.

Jeff cut her off. "And how does she feel about me?"

"Oh, that's the best part!" cried Borchert. He scooted his chair forward. "It's almost completely complementary! And where it's not complementary, it's symmetrical — I can show you the graphs. If that wouldn't be an invasion of your privacy," he added thoughtfully. "I figured we'd change the names, at some point down the line…"

" 'Just out in the hall,' " Jeff muttered. Now he was smirking and Annie's cheeks were hot.

"How did you even hear about — did Vicki—" she whispered loudly.

He shook his head. "You texted me about it, on the ride back from MIT."

"Oh, yeah." Annie winced, remembering. Then she smiled shyly at Jeff, who smiled back at her.

"This is absolute dynamite," Borchert declared. "I'd love to clamp both of your spines, right this minute. Except Scarlett can only keep track of one of you at a time… would you be willing to run through this conversation a second time? No, don't be an idiot, Russ, that wouldn't work —"

"Russ!" Jeff barked, before Borchert could go too far down the rabbit hole.

"Hmm?"

"What's this in aid of?" he asked. "You keep talking about a product."

"Oh, yeah. Okay, well, you know, that's kind of, okay, yeah." Borchert ran his hands through his hair anxiously. "Just tell them, Russ, rip the band-aid off, if they still have band-aids, probably they do, they're pretty reliable and improvements are likely to be incremental — all right!" he snapped, as though Jeff and Annie had been hectoring him, instead of just exchanging looks. "The idea is at heart a very simple one — a computer, or technically speaking a computer program, that models the roil of emotions within the human heart. It's an expansion of Raquel's original program, rededicated as a simulator."

"A simulator?"

"Yes! I know, this is a big concept, but, imagine a sort of virtual world, within the computer — defined by the program. And within that virtual world, we place virtual people — people who aren't real, who don't have souls, probably, not totally clear on that, might need to get a disclaimer from a bishop —"

"Russ!"

"We place the virtual people and they live out virtual lives, simulated lives. Imagine being able to — with a computer — understand the inner life of people. How people think, what people want. You wouldn't have to ask yourself if Debbie Furst would be willing to let you take her to see Cabaretat the Bijou, because you could look into her heart! Or into a perfect simulation of her heart, a computer-guided beautiful perfect model. I mean, neither of you are probably interested in Debbie Furst. Never mind about Debbie Furst. I went to high school with her. It doesn't matter."

"Debbie Furst doesn't matter," Annie said, in an amused, slightly patronizing tone.

"But imagine all the ways we could learn about ourselves, if we could experiment with lives, like that! Obviously it would be a horrible crime, just monstrous, to actually kidnap people or even recruit compensated volunteers and then torture them, just subject to them to all manner of terrible ordeal. I'm not advocating that! I'm saying we can use computers to make that torture unnecessary! With computers!"

"I think we're all in agreement that unnecessary torture should be avoided," Jeff said. Annie elbowed him.

"Children could learn that racism is bad, by hurling slurs at simulated minority persons and observing the effects! Politicians and social engineers would be able to examine minutely every potential outcome of their policy decisions! Surgeons could practice on simulated living people, instead of on mannikins and cadavers! Therapists could practice on simulated living people, too, instead of on stuffed animals and pets!" Borchert's eyes lit up as he outlined his vision of a perfect, computer-controlled society.

Jeff and Annie exchanged glances. "Go on," Annie said.

"We can control their environment, to a certain degree, and affect their responses, within a range established by program. You take little Virtua-Annie and you can send her to work, buy her a house, force her to socialize, and then you get to see how she responds. What sort of life she leads! Just as an example, do you want to move to Finland, Annie?"

Annie blinked, nonplussed. "Well—"

"Probably you don't! But maybe Finland would be the best place for you, Annie, maybe you would live happily ever after there! Finland is just an example, it could be Lapland or Denmark, that doesn't matter. We program an environment around Virtua-Annie that perfectly simulates Finland… or Labrador… and then we watch, and we learn about ourselves! Would you pick up the language quickly, or would you struggle? With computers, we can know these things!

"And then there's another idea, I think it's quite exciting: a whole simulated town, a sort of Virtua-ville! Or VirtuaCity, if you like that more. I'm not wedded to that name. But imagine if we could create those sorts of virtual worlds, and virtual lives! They'd be invaluable as teaching tools, for therapy… although also I'm thinking they could be essentially recreational, a sort of computer game. Imagine, using something as utilitarian as a computer to play a game!"

"Imagine," Jeff muttered in sarcastic agreement.

Borchert didn't hear him. "And not your common chess or Oubliette, no, no, no, I mean a true entertainment experience. Make your own fun! Live vicariously through your computer model! Would you be a good parent? Give your virtual self an infant and see how they react! Should you have an affair? All we have to do is program in a willing lover! When your spouse finds out about it, do you apologize and grovel and promise never to do it again, or do you try to talk them into joining you at key parties? Would that work out? We could know in advance! With perfect computer models, the divorce rate would plummet, because if a couple was going to make each other miserable, boom, we'd be able to tell that in advance and warn them off! The possibilities are endless! Endless, Jeff, endless!"

"Endless, yeah," Jeff agreed, rolling his eyes. Annie elbowed him to get him to be nice, but she was also trying not to laugh, so it made for a mixed message.

"Now, obviously all of that is a long, long way in the future. It will be years, decades perhaps, before Scarlett is able to truly plumb the depths of human experience well enough to simulate any given human being. But your datasets provide an opportunity for proof-of-concept prototyping! Using Virtua-Jeff and Virtua-Annie, once I've clamped both your spines and collected the data and actually built the models, that Jeff and that Annie will be the baseline for an infinity of possible combinations! Conventional heteronormative combinations, mostly, I mean, I know this is the amazing sexually permissive future, but to start with at least, we don't want to stir up any scandal, not while we're still trying to convince society that _the Virtuas_ is a wholesome educational product… that's the name Dr. Kleiman suggested, _the Virtuas_ , I think it's a reference to something? There's so much cultural detritus I still know nothing about…"

Surreptitiously Annie pulled out her phone. She signaled to Jeff, and he did the same.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1147:**

 **DO NOT TELL HIM ABOUT THE SIMS**

 **IT WOULD BREAK HIS HEART**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1147:**

 **I'd think you'd be more worried about being turned into a computer game**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1147:**

 **It wouldn't be the first time… Pierce's dad's thing, Elroy's lady time travelers game [eyeroll emoji]**

 **Besides I think there is very little chance of the Virtuas making it to market [tongue stuck out emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1148:**

 **You're always such a pessimist**

* * *

Annie smiled and started to reply, when she realized Borchert had stopped talking. He held his own phone, though what he was doing with it wasn't obvious. "Russ?"

"Oh, yes?" Borchert looked up from his phone. "Sorry, I thought we were taking a handheld computer break. So many new social conventions, here in the future. It's a lot to keep track of. Sorry. Are we done with that?"

"Yeah," Annie said slowly.

"So Scarlett is helping you construct models of human emotion," Jeff said, trying to resume the conversation. "And you'll use those models for… _the Virtuas_."

"Yes, yes!" Borchert nodded eagerly. "It'll be a fun Christmas gift for the whole family! They'll gather around the household computer, load the programs, and observe and simulate the two of you to their heart's content! I would show you some of the preliminary data, but without a full scan, I'm afraid it's not much to look at. Very important, but so-so in terms of display. I was excited at first, because usually when I put two of the virtua-people in the same space they ignore one another. Not Virtua-Annie and Virtua-Jeff, though!" He gestured towards a CRT monitor in the corner of the room, a black screen displaying a seemingly abstract design of white lines that only grudgingly resolved themselves into a wireframe cube containing two entwined wireframe stick figures.

"I see," Annie said, in the manner of someone who had just then reached their personal threshold for being weirded out.

"The little polygonal man and the little polygonal woman just neck, continuously, until they die of dehydration. Although, I was able to lick that problem by putting them in a shallow lake. Thought they'd starve to death, then. But actually, it's kind of funny, they drowned."

"I see," Annie repeated in much the same tone. She leaned against Jeff and murmured quietly, so Borchert wouldn't hear. "I changed my mind about humoring him. Let's get out of here before he tries to scan our brains and make toys out of us."

"I'm surprised at you," Jeff muttered back. "Usually you like to humor crazy people; it's how you succeeded so well at Greendale."

"Yeah, well, that was Greendale. This is the East Coast where people are mean and rude. Gotta keep up or you fall behind!"

Borchert hadn't noticed their whispering, as he continued to describe his simulation. "I mean, eventually the sleep deprivation got to be too much for them, and they passed out, and then, pop, drowning in one another's arms. Very romantic, I suppose. I was in the middle of constructing a hot dog vendor on a raft, which turned out to be unnecessary —"

"Just so I'm completely clear on this," Jeff interrupted, "this whole project has nothing to do with Pierce Hawthorne?"

"I could turn off death," Borchert mused, "but then the product becomes less educational."

"Russ!"

"Huh? Sorry? You were saying?"

" _The Virtuas_ — Scarlett — this whole thing, it has nothing to do with Pierce?"

Borchert looked perplexed a moment, then nodded. "Pierce Hawthorne. Right. You asked about him before. I think I heard he was dead — although I have a number for his lawyer, somewhere… wait, haven't we had this conversation before?"

* * *

After promising Borchert that they really would return soon for the major data collection ("Block out twelve hours for spine-clamping!" Borchert exhorted them), Jeff and Annie conferred in a sandwich shop.

"So Borchert turned out to be a waste of time," Annie grumbled as she pored over her notes on her laptop.

"Not at all! I think meeting one of the premiere computer scientists of our era is never a waste of time," Jeff said. "We got that whole description of _the Virtuas_ , we confirmed that if Borchert is involved in Pierce's schemes it's news to him…" He grinned.

Annie glanced up. "You just like knowing that Virtua-Annie would sooner drown than stop kissing Virtua-you. Although the joke's on you, buster, because Virtua-Jeff is just as smitten."

"Oh, Virtua-Jeff is wrapped around Virtua-Annie's little finger; we all knew that." Jeff yawned. "If Borchert isn't aware of the suit, there's no way Pierce could be using it to shield his assets. Russ is a part-owner of Via Laser Lotus; he'd have to be informed in advance of the kind of restructuring we were talking about."

"Are you sure?" Annie considered the idea. "Maybe he got a letter. I bet his mailbox is stuffed."

Jeff shook his head. "As much as I hate to disappoint you, there'd be a recorded phone call. The nerds in Delaware were pretty firm on that."

"Maybe they're in on it. Or maybe Russ was lying to us," Annie guessed.

Jeff sat up and adopted Borchert's nasal tone and stumbling cadence. " 'Okay, Russ, here they are, you can do this, just tell them the lie and then you can clamp their spines and everyone will be happy, gonna tell a lie, oh, look, Annie brought her breasts, don't stare at her breasts, Russ, no matter how succulent—' " He broke off as Annie, laughing, threw a balled-up napkin at him.

"Okay, Dr. Borchert probably wasn't lying to us," she said. "Where does that leave us?"

He shrugged. "There's the woman in Florida who owns Pierce's house. Evelyn something."

"That's right!" Annie nodded, as she opened a browser and started researching, calling up publicly-available documents relating to the address in Squantum.

Jeff scooted around the table to watch over her shoulder. "You're amazing,"

"It's just a matter of knowing where to look," Annie said with a smug smile. "I picked up some tricks at the FBI, after all."

"Really?"

"No. Abed sent me a link to an article about searching public records a few weeks ago… ah!" Her searching soon provided the name of the land's title holders: Evelyn and Bertram Fleebhaven.

"That says they live at that house," Jeff observed. "That can't be right."

"It's out of date…" Annie tried the new data points — Evelyn Fleebhaven, Bertram Fleebhaven — turning up an obituary for Bertram dated three years before. "See here? He was survived by his wife, son Charles, and two grandchildren that reside in Florida," she read. "So Evelyn turned snowbird after her fella kacked it, to be closer to Chuck's rugrats, started renting out her old pad…"

"Fascinating," Jeff said. "I mean your use of slang is fascinating. Try for the son — Fleebhaven can't be a common name."

"Done and done." Annie pressed a few keys, quickly finding the spartan homepage of Fleebhaven General Contracting, providing quality painting, electrical, plumbing, and carpentry to the Tampa area since 1995. "And here's his phone number."

Jeff already had his phone out. He input the number quickly… "It's ringing. Hello!" Annie grinned as Jeff's slack expression shifted into an animated, friendly smile, and his voice turned warm. "May I please speak to Evelyn Fleebhaven? Oh, I'm so sorry. Do you have a number I can reach her…? …Of course… It's in reference to her property in Squantum, Massachusetts…. My name is Jeff Winger, I'm an attorney here in Boston with Biddle Heath —" Jeff broke off suddenly, his smile replaced by a perplexed expression. He was silent for a few seconds, listening.

Annie made a what's-happening gesture.

Jeff shrugged. Then the other party finished their speech, whatever it was. "Wonderful, thank you. If I—" Jeff broke off again, and scowled as he lowered the phone. "Chuck hung up on me."

Annie made a go-on gesture.

"His mother is not available for phone calls because she's on a casino trip," he explained. "Chuck does not approve of gambling, but the otherlawyer from Biddle Heath paid Mother Fleebhaven a handsome sum this morning, and she immediately rushed out as if it was burning a hole in her pocket."

"The other lawyer?" Annie's face hardened. "Will Stone!"

Jeff nodded tightly. "Stone called her this morning, told her about the fire. I'm guessing he wired her enough that she was really happy Chuck's childhood home burned down. You can see why Chuck did not want to talk to me."

"If he called her this morning…" Annie began.

"…then Will must have been in touch with Pierce, today," Jeff finished. "So now we have another reason to call on your second-favorite day-drinker—"

Annie laughed. "My what?"

Jeff adopted a hurt expression. "You were using all that slang before. You made it look fun."

She flipped her laptop closed. "To your office!"

He shook his head. "Nah, it's Saturday; no one's there on Saturday."

"Oh." Annie looked briefly crestfallen. "Should we call him? Or, no, do you know where Stone lives?"

Jeff shook his head. He had his phone out again.

"Don't call him yet!"

"I'm not, don't worry."

* * *

 **JEFF to MARK, 1415:**

 **What's Will's home address?**

* * *

 **MARK to JEFF, 1415:**

 **901 Hastings, Weston**

* * *

"He's almost as fast with a response as you are," Annie said, reading the message. "You know who's really fast, though? Frankie… Okay. New plan." Annie rubbed her hands together. "We go over there, we confirm he's home, then we burst in on him like a SWAT team when he's not expecting us. If he's not home, we go over there, we learn he's not home, _then_ we try calling him."

Jeff nodded. "There's a good chance Pierce is at Will's house," he mused.

Annie hesitated. "I hadn't thought of that."

"What's wrong?"

"I've been thinking — about when, or if, we actually find Pierce. He faked his death, so, he's a fugitive. I should call the police on him. I mean, if I don't and it ever got out, that wouldn't do much for my future at the FBI."

Jeff forced a chuckle. "Most FBI agents don't hang out with fugitives? _The Simpsons_ lied to us, and there's no big annual Cops-Mafia picnic and volleyball tournament?"

Annie didn't smile. "No. And I'm not even an FBI agent, I'm just an office worker who wants to become an agent someday. I know you meant well, fifty million dollars and all, but… I wish I didn't know Pierce was alive. I don't know what we'll do when we find him."


	30. Don't Get Smart

Will Stone's home was a modest single-family dwelling well away from the beating heart of the city, within a largely treeless subdivision of similar homes. The house was nondescript even among the dull houses of the neighborhood; Stone's only apparent customization was a free-standing portable basketball hoop at the edge of the driveway.

Jeff and Annie parked several houses down and examined the house from a distance.

"His car's in the driveway, so he's home. Probably. We should have binoculars," Annie grumbled. Instead they had sunglasses, which were helpful but insufficient.

Jeff scowled. "Sorry my car doesn't come equipped with spy gear. The shades are all drawn anyway. There isn't anything to see."

She nodded. "Okay, pull up and block his driveway. That way if he flees, he'll be on foot and we can catch him."

"What if he goes out the back?" Jeff asked, one eyebrow raised. She seemed very… earnest. Frankly, it was kind of hot.

Annie frowned, seeming to consider it a serious question. "No. That fence goes all the way around the yard, and the gate out leads to the front — we'll see if he goes that way. Maybe I should stay in the car while you knock on his door. That way, if he pulls something we're not expecting, roller skates or a jetpack or something, I'll be able to pursue. And we might need to make a quick getaway, if he has dogs or something. Of course dogs would be no match for a whole car… maybe some fender damage, either way, dogs or Stone…"

"You're not considering running him down!" Jeff said, taken aback. Then he did a double take as he caught the gleam in her eye, and laughed.

"Gotcha," she said saucily.

"Yeah you did." Jeff advanced the car to park in Stone's driveway, just in case. "We should have thought of Will last night," he mused. "It's not like he's been entirely straight with either of us."

"That's an understatement."

"Yeah, well, Pierce is a handful. I don't hold it against him. If Pierce was my client I'd probably be drinking heavily and telling a lot of lies, too." Jeff sighed. "Is it too late to claim that the reason I spent last year drinking wasn't because I missed you, it was because I was secretly working for Pierce?"

Annie wrinkled her nose. "You know I'm on your side but that one's a tough sell."

They removed their seat belts and looked at each other for about a second and a half before leaning in to kiss, briefly, then kiss again less briefly. And then they had to choose between exiting the car and just staying there and kissing more, which was a hard choice but there'd be time for kissing later.

Stone didn't answer his doorbell immediately. Jeff and Annie exchanged glances, and waited. Just as Jeff was about to try the doorbell a third time and supplement it with knocking, his phone rang. "Will," he told Annie, and answered it.

He slouched a bit, and Annie pressed into him and craned her neck, to try to hear. "Hello?"

"Jeff. Buddy. Technically my subordinate." Stone's speech was slightly slurred.

"Hey, Will," Jeff said. "Are you in your house?"

"Mmmaybe. Why're you on my porch with your girlfriend? You wanna take me out? Shoulda called first, maybe I've got plans."

"We were hoping to catch you at home and I guess we got lucky. You want to let us in?"

"I gotta choice?"

"Uh, yeah." Jeff shrugged, glancing down at Annie. "Let us in now, let us in later, we can just wait here. Annie and I are good at killing time together."

"Yeah!" Annie interjected.

"What is it that can't wait till Monday and that you can't just email me about?" There was an edge of frustration in Stone's voice.

"Take a guess, Will," Jeff said wearily.

"Listen, I've already told you —"

Jeff interrupted him. "Can we have this conversation face to face? Right now Annie and I are huddled together around my phone. It's awkward. Height difference."

"If you want, we could come in and sit down, and you could go into another room and we could keep talking on phone," Annie offered. "Just with me and Jeff on a couch."

"Fine, fine, I get it, I'm being unreasonable, you think. Maybe I know something you don't, though."

Jeff saw a flicker of motion in a window — Stone pushing a shade aside to sneak a peek at them? "C'mon Will. I just want to wrap this up. We can all see where it's going."

There were several distinct scraping sounds, and then the front door swung open. "All right, come on in," Stone groused. He was half blocking the doorway but Jeff and Annie were able to slide past him into the house.

"Sit anywhere," he said as he closed the door behind them. "I suppose I can guess why you're here," he added, gesturing towards the far end of his small foyer towards a living room.

Jeff entered the living room cautiously, half-expecting to see Pierce sprawled on a sofa. No Pierce. No sign of anyone sleeping on the couch, either, and the couch had enough detritus around it — empty cans of soda, dirty plates and dishes — that Jeff was pretty sure there'd still be a blanket out if someone had slept there.

"I know everything," Annie told Stone. She moved a short stack of plates out of the way and sat down next to Jeff. "So you may as well talk."

"Fine," Stone said with a groan. Then he stood up straight as something occurred to him. "Wait, if you already know everything what do you need me to tell you?"

"Don't get smart with us," Annie warned him.

"She's right." Jeff yawned, then continued in a breezy tone. "You don't know her the way I do — I warn you, if Psycho here gets riled I can't control her."

"The tiny one is your bad cop?" Stone raised an eyebrow. "Not the way I would have gone."

"I'm sorry, did I hear you correctly?" Annie leaned forward, scowling.

Jeff winced slightly. Annie had been playing with Stone, same as him — having fun, like they'd done with Pierce's neighbors the night before. But then Stone had gone and denigrated Annie's intimidation skills. "Shouldn't've done that, Will."

"Harboring a fugitive. Conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Legal malpractice, obviously." Annie ticked the charges off on her fingers. "Conspiracy to commit arson. Perjury…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Stone held his hands up. "Let's all take a second and calm down — there's, uh, if this is about Hawthorne's estate and your inheritance —"

"Attempting to bribe a federal officer!"

Jeff leaned back on the couch, shaking his head. "I don't know that he was trying to bribe you in your capacity as a federal officer."

"Maybe, maybe not."

He tried not to smile. "Also, are you a federal officer? Federal employee, yes, but not really an officer, not yet…"

Annie glared at Stone until he averted his eyes. "We can see what a grand jury thinks."

"You know, you've calmed down," Jeff observed. He stroked her shoulder absently. "I think a year, two years ago, I'd be pulling you off of Will right now."

"I haven't ruled that out."

Jeff nodded. "As your legal counsel, Will, I suggest you apologize to Annie."

Stone took a ragged breath. "Ah, okay. Yeah. Okay. Listen, I don't know what — I just — I misspoke, clearly!" He sank into an armchair. "I'm sorry. Can we start over? Pierce always said you were nice, you know. You're his favorite!"

Annie sniffed. "Apology accepted. Where is Pierce?"

"I don't know," Stone cried desperately. He turned towards Jeff. "Come on, you were with me, last time I saw him—"

Stone fell silent when Annie raised one finger and narrowed her eyes. "Ugh, we were getting along so well, and then you went and lied to us."

"Again, Will, not a smart move," Jeff said as disinterestedly as he could. He had his phone in his hands, texting nobody in particular.

"It's the truth!"

Annie sighed, as though dealing with Stone's mendacity was exhausting her patience. "We know you paid off his landlady this morning. Therefore you knew he burned down her house…"

"I haven't seen him since Thursday," Stone insisted. "But all right, yes, I talked to him on the phone. He told me he was anxious about you finding him, I told him not to worry, that we'd talked Jeff into covering for him and that you weren't going to find out—"

"I cracked quickly under the withering force of her interrogation," Jeff announced, without looking up from his phone. "And you know, she cares about me. You, she has to reason to be nice."

"I feel like you're overselling the bit," Annie said, turning to him.

"I'm just trying to complement your energy." Jeff put away his phone. "Good cop, bad cop. Aggressive cop, passive cop. Charming and handsome cop, smitten girlfriend cop."

She smiled. "Do you think we're overdoing it?"

Stone let out a bark of mirthless laughter. "Maybe a little?" He looked to Annie, then Jeff, then back to Annie. "I honestly can't tell whether you're just messing with me. Are you just messing with me?"

Annie ignored his question. "Where's Pierce?"

"I honestly don't know." Stone held his hands out, pleading. "He called me the night after Jeff and Mark and I all went out to his place. Said he was relocating to be closer to the action and to keep you off his scent. Wanted to make a plan to meet with Jeff for drinks. Kept going on about fresh-fruit margaritas."

"Huh." Jeff scratched his chin. "Fresh-fruit margaritas? Not scotch?"

Stone shrugged. "That's what he said. I don't know why. He's a weird old man."

Annie frowned. "He means well. Most of the time. Or he did, the last time I saw him, which was almost two years ago."

Jeff sighed. "I know where Pierce is."

Annie did a double take. "You do?"

"There's this Mexican place I see every day, walking to work. They have a big sign in their window advertising their fresh fruit margaritas of the day — blackberry margaritas, watermelon margaritas. El Ray del Sol, is the name of the place."

"I'm not following you," said Stone.

"I see it every day because it's directly across the street from my apartment building. My corporate-owned, anonymous, short-term furnished-housing apartment building that I know for a fact you can move into on about an hour's notice."

"You do basically live in a hotel suite." Annie nodded. "Right. Let's go."

"Well, hey," Stone began, "glad I could help. This was fun, maybe we can meet under more pleasant —"

"Oh, you're coming with, Will," Jeff told him.

Annie nodded again. "Otherwise you might try to call Pierce and warn him."

Stone sighed. "Can I just…? Can I just offer an alternative? Just putting it out there, what if, instead of confronting Pierce, you don't confront Pierce. Think about it! Don't answer yet! There's a lot of possible advantages to this plan. One, Pierce gets to feel like a criminal mastermind. You have no idea how much he's enjoyed being in hiding… Two, you get fifty million dollars in offshore tax-sheltered holdings. I don't know how much it would cost to launder it, but still, we've got to be talking tens of millions."

"Launder it?" Annie looked aghast.

"Launder, pay taxes on, whichever. Either way, it's a lot of money," Stone said. He rubbed his thumb and index finger together, the universal sign for money. "Don't think about it as an ineffable sum, think about it as not having to live with Vicki Jenkins and ride the bus to work."

Doubt flickered across Annie's face for the first time in the conversation.

Stone pressed on. "Three… three? Three, Jeff and I keep getting paid, too. You like getting paid, right Jeff?"

Jeff scowled at him, but said nothing.

"Four," Stone continued desperately, "nobody at the FBI ever finds out about all of this, and Annie Edison gets to become an FBI agent like you apparently have always wanted."

Annie glanced over at Jeff, suddenly uncertain.

It occurred to Jeff that if she had seriously considered how obtaining tens of millions of dollars could affect her life, she hadn't discussed it with him. And he knew how seriously she harbored her ambitions. "Counterargument," he said. "Somebody at the FBI or the IRS finds out about this, it'll be a real problem, and not one that playing 'sexy cop, sexier cop' can fix. "

"Just think about it. I mean, it can't be an easy decision," Stone pleaded. "You're just a kid, really, you don't know what you want out of life —"

Annie set her jaw. "I do, though."

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1510:**

 **Are you home?**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1516:**

 **Are you home?**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1521:**

 **Are you home?**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1525:**

 **Seriously I need you**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1530:**

 **!**

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 1531:**

 **I'm not in Somerville**

 **I'm with Jeff**

* * *

Jeff was beginning to worry that they hadn't thought this through.

He and Annie were more or less holding Stone hostage, which might be a thing at his annual performance review (not to mention Stone's assertion that confronting Pierce was killing the goose that lay the golden eggs, in terms of the effect on their billing). Annie had confiscated Stone's phone, so he couldn't call Pierce to warn him ("Little tip," Jeff had told Stone when they'd first gone through the phone. "Don't label your supposedly-dead client's phone number 'Pierce (Secretly Alive)' "). But they didn't know which of the dozens of apartments in his building Pierce would be in. It was even possible that he was in one of the buildings next door or across the street.

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1532:**

 **I need your keys**

 **I locked myself out**

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 1534:**

 **We just got to his place**

 **Kind of doing a thing**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1534:**

 **Come on! You can take a half-hour break from your sexhaving**

 **I'll be your best friend!**

 **And Jeff will LOVE driving you home real quick**

* * *

On the drive back to his building Jeff had tried to exchange meaningful glances with Annie, to get her read on the situation. However even if she hadn't been distracted by her phone, the vocabulary of their meaningful glances seemed to be limited to one of the following messages:

 _\- I adore you and we should have sex as soon as possible_

 _\- You have my full support_

 _\- I could not possibly enjoy your company more than I currently do_

When pressed he could communicate _I don't know either_ or _you know as well as I do what a bad plan that is_ but _I'm utterly at sea here, help me out_ was about where they topped out. If he had to pick a reason, he'd blame years and years of _man I wish we were making out right now it's a shame that's never going to happen (again)_ being 95% of their unspoken communication.

That, and the fact that they'd technically been together for not even a week.

As they took the elevator up to his apartment, Jeff wondered whether Annie had more of a plan than he did. Probably not; they'd been winging it all day. Once inside they conferred only briefly, as Stone sat down on Jeff's sofa and started flipping through channels on the TV. Annie excused herself to the restroom.

Jeff sat down on the sofa at the far end from Stone, and tried come up with a plan. He wondered if Annie was doing the same thing.

 _Probably, yeah._ Imaginary Annie was there, suddenly, curled up on the sofa between him and Stone, resting her head on Jeff's shoulder. _But you don't need me, you can just ask her in a minute._

That was true, of course. Jeff didn't need to guess what Annie was thinking, not any more.

 _Like you ever really needed to,_ Imaginary Annie murmured as she petted his thigh. _That was never what you needed me for._

Sure it was. That, and giving a face to his veiled self-loathing.

 _You're going to be fine, you know,_ she continued, ignoring his unvoiced thought. _She loves you, you love her, although you haven't actually talked about that… which maybe you should, before you slip up and tell her you love her by way of greeting or farewell and she's surprised because you're so low-key about it… but you're going to be fine. However this thing with Pierce ends._

That was probably true.

 _Unless you end up in prison. But that's not likely,_ Imaginary Annie assured him. _Anyway, I don't — she doesn't have any unrealistic expectations. I tell you what she's too polite to, right? So I can tell you, she's absolutely aware of how messed up you are… speaking of, seriously, therapy… but she's still in it with you. She knows you better than anyone. You already hurt her as much as you can, with the whole 'fleeing the state' thing, and she's forgiven you for that. She still loves you._

She was better than he deserved.

 _Maybe. Maybe not. You're who she wants, though, and you can't pretend you don't adore her as much as she deserves to be adored. That's got to count for a lot._

He'd kind of dropped the ball on the flowers. She'd been disappointed to learn that he'd let Mark handle the details, rather than select them personally.

She rolled her eyes. _Yeah, obviously I'm holding that against you, that's why I said exactly one thing about that, and why I've been grinning at you basically continuously since we met up last night._

Jeff smiled.

 _Face it, Jeff, you lucked out. Somehow you managed to successfully initiate a relationship with Annie Edison. I'm right proud of you, Annie straightened up. And since I'm basically a projection of your insecurities, maybe this means you've magically become a well-adjusted person!_

Heh, maybe.

 _But probably it just means you're in love and happy about it, and you should take this energy and enthusiasm and start therapy again, because panic attacks suck. And because Annie enjoys your company even more when you're in a good mood and responding proportionately to events._

"Yeah, yeah," Jeff said. "Just as soon as this thing with Pierce is worked out."

"Huh?" Stone turned to him. "What's that?"

Jeff shook his head. "Never mind." He hadn't meant to speak out loud.

You don't need me telling you this stuff. Really you don't need me at all.

Stone shrugged. "Fine, fine. Speaking of Pierce, are we calling Pierce, or what are we doing?"

"Yes," Jeff decided. "We'll call him and invite him over."

"You know, not to criticize, but you took away my phone so I couldn't call him, and now you're talking about calling him…"

"I'll call him. He won't remember that he didn't give me his number."

"Great, whatever. I mean, the sooner we get this dealt with, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Also, you got any chips, or fruit, or cookies or something?" Stone rose without waiting for Jeff's answer, and wandered towards his small kitchen. "Is it all booze and frozen pizzas in here? You work out, you must eat right…"

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 1535:**

 **When we're done with this okay?**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1536:**

 **Oh God how long will that be?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 1537:**

 **We are NOT having sex right now!**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1537:**

 **Oh god that's even worse**

 **Seriously you're going to be gazing adoringly into each other's eyes for hours**

 **I love you but you two are the worst for that [heart-eyes emoji]**

 **[heart-eyes emoji] [heart-eyes emoji] [heart-eyes emoji]**

 **Also how many flowers does a person need? There are starving children in Africa you know**

* * *

 **ANNIE to VICKI, 1538:**

 **Argh fine but you HAVE to go fast**

 **We're in the middle of something I'll explain later**

 **Text me when you're close and I'll meet you on the street**

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1539:**

 **Thanks you're the best**

 **Love you roomie!**

* * *

"Oh, are we getting dinner?" Annie asked as she finally emerged from the back of the apartment. She must have done something with her makeup, Jeff mused; she looked incredible. "It's kind of early."

"Here's a plan," he told her. "I call Pierce. I tell him I know where he is. I suggest grabbing Mexican together, fresh-fruit margaritas like he was telling Will about. I meet him down at the restaurant. Once he's there, I break it to him that the jig is up. You hang back, wait ten minutes or so, because we don't want him to panic, which he might if he sees you sitting with me. And then…" Jeff trailed off, unsure what, exactly, they'd do at that point.

Annie nodded tightly. "We'll talk some sense into him."

"Or — just a thought! — or you let him give you a lot of money and retire in peace," Stone suggested. "Just a thought!"

Annie clucked her tongue. "We're not doing that," she told Stone. "I told you. It'd wreck my career."

"And that is important to you," Jeff said meditatively. "Although, there's a lot you can do with a lot of money. Arguably tens of millions of dollars could effectively substitute for a career."

She scowled, giving Jeff a look that he interpreted as _I need your buy-in on this because frankly it's tempting to take the money and run_.

He grinned at her, hopefully conveying _I've got your back on this of course but you have to admit it's a lot of money_. "I'll call Pierce."

Annie smiled back. "One way or another, we need to settle this."


	31. So Soon After Realizing

On a Saturday afternoon, El Ray del Sol was mostly empty. The little restaurant's main seating area had only about eight tables; during peak hours a courtyard behind the building filled with spillover diners. Aside from Jeff the only other restaurant patrons in sight were a couple in their twenties, who made goo-goo eyes at one another in the corner. Jeff didn't want to stare at them, and he didn't want to stare at the pitcher of, ugh, fresh watermelon margaritas he'd ordered. That left just one option.

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1612:**

 **Anything?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1613:**

 **The restaurant really should be called El Rayo del Sol. It's missing an O**

 **Or maybe El Rey del Sol**

 **With an E**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1614:**

 **You must be the only graduate of Chang's Spanish class who would ever notice that**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 16:14**

 **[Heart emoji]**

* * *

 **JEFF to ANNIE, 1615:**

 **Anything Pierce?**

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 1615:**

 **No**

 **Yes**

 **!**

* * *

"Jeffrey!" Suddenly Pierce was there, big as life and twice as cocky, slapping him on the back and smirking like he'd just won a bet.

"Hi, Pierce," Jeff said, putting away his phone. He sighed, already exhausted by the mere thought of having to pretend. "Sit down, have a drink." He indicated the pitcher on the table in front of him.

"Don't mind if I do!" With obvious relish, Pierce sat down across from Jeff and poured himself a generous glass. "It's the little things, Jeff, that make life worth living. You get to be my age, you'll know that. You thought forty was rough, let me tell you, when you turn sixty your whole perspective changes."

"You're seventy-three," Jeff pointed out.

"I'm seventy-two!" Pierce snapped. "I don't turn seventy-three until next month. Don't you dig my grave yet. My doctor says I have the body of a fifty-five-year-old." He took a swig of the margarita and either smiled or grimaced, it was hard to tell which. "This is what the kids are drinking these days, huh?"

"I can't imagine why you would think that." Jeff eyed the pitcher suspiciously and tried to decide whether drinking a watermelon margarita would improve his mood or darken it. He settled on having some.

"Here we are, sitting comfortably on a sunny day, watching people walk by. We have cold alcoholic drinks and no one trying to murder us — for millennia, this is how men conceptualized Paradise. All that's missing is a few pretty girls waiting on us hand and foot."

Jeff took a sip of the margarita and was pleasantly surprised — it was still a margarita, but it wasn't nearly as candy-sweet and syrupy as he'd expected. "You actually make a pretty good point."

"Heh. Maybe we should find a strip club," Pierce mused. "There must be one around somewhere."

"And then reality comes crashing back in…"

"Eh?"

"Listen, I invited you here for a reason —"

"Duh! We haven't hung out together in years. We really need to catch up — how's Annie?" Pierce chuckled. "How's Annie? That's right, I know all about that. Let's just say I have my sources."

"Annie continues to be everybody's favorite person." Jeff took another sip of the margarita. "You know you can't give her all that money."

Pierce bristled. "Of course I can! It's my money, I can do whatever I want with it."

"You haven't thought this through. You give Annie the money, suddenly she has to account for all this money to the government —"

"Lousy Democrats," muttered Pierce. "Tax and spend, tax and spend. But there's ways around that, you know. I used to have a whole team of people to deal with it — Asians, mostly. Very smart."

"Uh-huh. You know she's going to be an FBI agent. She works in their Boston office now." Jeff cocked a head in the general direction of the Federal building. "She can't afford to be mixed up in anything illicit."

"Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey." Pierce shook his head. "You don't have enough faith in her. She's smart as a whip, and she'll have money to hire all the Asians she needs."

"As a lawyer, I can tell you her position would be severely weakened by the need to protect you," Jeff said. "She'd be perjuring herself; there's no way she could avoid deposition, bare minimum, and you can be sure they'd ask about you."

"As far as she knows, I'm dead," Pierce countered. "Unless you told her!" He leaned forward. "Frankly Jeff I thought you had better judgement than —"

"Argh!" Jeff gave a bark of frustration. He pulled out his phone and scrolled upwards through the messages from Annie. "You see?" he thrust the phone towards Pierce.

* * *

 **ANNIE to JEFF, 0710:**

 **[Heart emoji] So Pierce is in Squantum, huh? [Kiss emoji]**

 **(I had to look it up it's a suburb on the other side of the city)**

 **(But you knew that?) [Raised eyebrow emoji] [flower emoji] [kiss emoji]**

* * *

Pierce peered at the message. "What is that, Twitter? What are those little pictures?"

Jeff ignored the questions. "Annie sent that to me yesterday morning. Apparently you hired a PI to follow her and he went rogue."

Pierce sniffed. "Oh. Him."

"So she knows you're alive," Jeff said impatiently.

"She heard someone claim I was alive," Pierce corrected him. "She doesn't know the truth. Unless you told her. Which would make it your fault."

"It's not about fault, Pierce, it's—"

"Oho, spoken like someone whose fault it is! The only guy who doesn't want to play the blame game is the guy who's going to get blamed!"

"Dammit, Pierce!" Jeff slammed his glass down on the table. "You don't seem to get the situation you're in. You have no plan. You have no skill whatsoever at hiding your tracks."

"I've done fine up to this point—"

"Yeah, because you weren't setting fires and sending cryptic messages and hiring private investigators! Maybe you were keeping a low profile before, but after all you've pulled in the last couple of weeks, it's a matter of days, if not hours, before law enforcement finds out you faked your death — which, by the way, is illegal. And again, speaking as a defense attorney, it would be really hard to get out of that one, what with there being a death certificate and you being _alive_."

Pierce made a sour face. "It's not my fault if the county coroner misidentified a wax mannikin as my corpse, I'm not responsible for Terry's incompetence —"

"Terry?" Jeff asked.

"The coroner!" Pierce snapped. "I may be better at hiding my tracks than you think," he said airily. "For instance, I'm no longer living in the house we met at the other day. Don't try to find me —"

"You're living in my building."

"What? How did you know?" Pierce coughed, stalling for time. "I mean, I'm not. That's not where I'm staying."

"Well, even if it wasn't kind of obvious, which it was, Annie texted me telling me when she saw you coming out of the building and crossing the street to come here."

"Annie's here?" For the first time, Pierce looked alarmed. It was the stunned look of a man who had just realized he was in Annie Edison's sights — an expression Jeff knew well. He'd worn it himself often enough.

"Of course she's here." Jeff spoke quietly at first, growing more strident as he worked himself up. "Because she cares about you, because your stupid video will implicates her in your stupid faked death scheme, and because I'm here and we like to do things together!"

"Who do you like to do things with?" Annie asked as she slid into the seat next to Jeff. "Do I know her?"

* * *

"That wasn't ten minutes," Jeff said, frowning.

"I know, sorry." Annie shrugged, then poured herself a margarita. She gave Jeff a peck on the cheek by way of apology, and watched his scowl fade into a familiar, sappy smile. "I got antsy."

Pierce sputtered, struggling to regain sufficient composure to speak. "Annie!"

"Hi, Pierce." Annie took a sip of her margarita. "Ooh," she said appreciatively. "This is actually pretty good."

Jeff nodded.

"You — I — it's so good to see you!" Pierce started to rise from his seat, to hug her, probably.

Annie waited until he was within arm's reach, then set the margarita down and slapped him across the face.

Pierce drew back. "Annie!"

She was fuming. "I thought you were dead, Pierce! We had a funeral and everything, and you passed out sperm and insulted people in your will, and you gave Britta a used iPod Nano, and now I find out you have a secret will, except you don't, and you're not even _dead_ and you committed arson!"

"Okay, well," Pierce said, nonplussed. "I mean, I think that we can agree 'insulted people' is kind of strong. I'm sure Britta appreciated the gesture. And I gave you a tiara!" His voice twisted into a whine.

Annie glanced around, concerned that some nosy Nellie was overhearing their discussion of all the crimes Pierce had conspired to commit. Fortunately the restaurant was nearly empty. She sighed, and rose to embrace Pierce while murmuring _there there_ and _poor sweet baby_ over and over again.

Jeff, still seated and positioned where Pierce couldn't see his face, grinned at her. _Don't you say a word_ she mouthed at him.

Pierce, meanwhile, was sniffling. "I just wanted to see my funeral, and make sure my estate was handled properly. Gilbert had just died, you know. He was all the family I had left."

"I didn't know, and I'm sorry for your loss," Annie said, patting him on the back. She shot a meaningful look at Jeff.

"Absolutely," Jeff agreed. He sighed. "I can imagine what it's like to lose someone so soon after realizing how important they are to you."

Pierce pulled back from the embrace and sat back down in his seat. "I admit it hasn't worked out the way I'd hoped. Probably should have made actual puzzles instead of just recording some clips. I was going to fill the rest in later, but there was all this prestige television to watch, and then it was too late. And now it's really too late…" He looked around shiftily. "Probably."

"It is absolutely too late," Annie told him firmly, just to head off whatever zanier scheme Pierce might have been conjuring to repair his failed, zany scheme. She sat back down, too. "You need to turn yourself in. It'll go worse for you, otherwise."

"I don't want to! We can just keep this whole thing quiet, just between us. I was just saying to Jeffrey, I think you don't give me enough credit—"

"Arson." Annie glared at him.

"Also I'm too old and rich and tall and handsome and virile for prison," Pierce said petulantly.

"Well, maybe you should have thought of that when you decided to fake your death instead of pay your taxes like a sane person does. I pay my taxes. Jeff pays his taxes. I know for a fact Britta pays her taxes because I walked her through it this past April. Britta can do it: it's not that hard!"

Pierce opened his mouth to rebut her argument, but his expression became one of slack-jawed surprise as he saw something over Annie's shoulder. Someone, rather; Annie realized what had happened the moment she heard Vicki's voice. "Hey, guys, I know you're in the middle of… of… oh my God, Pierce?!"

Annie blanched and spun around. "You were supposed to text me!" she stage-whispered, springing to her feet.

"I did!" Vicki held up her phone, aghast. Annie glanced down at hers and swore under her breath.

* * *

 **VICKI to ANNIE, 1622:**

 **On the street**

 **Just saw you go into a Mexican restaurant**

* * *

"He faked his death, didn't he? I knew it!" Vicki turned, to address Pierce directly. "Getting out of paying alimony, or did you just lie to all your friends for funsies? I knew that stupid treasure-hunt thing had to be some kind of trick!"

"Vicki," growled Pierce. His hand found a fork on the table in front of him, and tightened around it.

Jeff clapped his hands together, commanding everyone's attention. "Okay, great, now Vicki's here. Join us, please. Have some watermelon margarita; it's better than you'd think."

"It's not even five," Vicki snapped. "I'm calling the police —"

"Vicki," Annie pleaded, taking her hand.

Vicki sighed. "Oh, all right." She glared at Pierce, before sitting down. She permitted Jeff to pour her a drink, as Annie patted her on the back and sat down next to her. "What are you guys even talking about?"

"Secret stuff," Pierce said.

"Whether we're going to go to the authorities and report Pierce and pay a large fortune in fines and taxes, or let Pierce stay dead and Annie inherit the bulk of his fortune," Jeff said evenly.

Vicki took a sip of margarita and made a face. "Wait, what?" She turned to Annie, nonplussed. "He was serious about the inheritance thing?"

Annie nodded. "But he's — Pierce, you're not good at pretending to be dead, you committed arson —"

"Who cares? It's fifty million dollars!" cried Vicki. "It is fifty million dollars, right?"

Pierce lit up. "See? Vicki gets it, and she's an idiot cow!"

"Not cool!" Annie felt a stress headache coming on. She glared at Pierce.

"Sorry, sorry. You're an idiot _woman_ ," Pierce told Vicki.

"Give me a million dollars and I'll accept your apology," Vicki said immediately.

"You guys…" Annie began.

"Three thousand," offered Pierce.

"Eight hundred thousand," said Vicki.

"Thirty thousand."

"Five hundred thousand."

"Thirty thousand, take it or leave it."

"Fine." Vicki rolled her eyes. "Ugh, you chiseler."

Pierce produced a checkbook from somewhere and began writing Vicki a check. "Don't spend it all in one place."

"You have thirty thousand dollars in your checking account?" Jeff asked, amazed.

Pierce shrugged as he handed the check to Vicki.

"National Bank of Angola," Vicki read. "Huh." She folded the check and put it carefully away. "Obviously you should take the money," she told Annie. "See how easy it is? Now I can make rent!"

"Congratulations on tripling your annual income," Jeff said, "but it's not that easy." He paused, as though trying to remember why, exactly, it wasn't that easy.

"I have an obligation to the law," Annie said.

"She has an obligation to the law," Jeff said. "She has career goals, and a long-term plan, and covering up for Pierce would put all of that in jeopardy."

"Yes, exactly, thank you," Annie agreed. "Plus it's morally wrong," she added after a moment's pause. "The only way forward is for Pierce to turn himself in."

Pierce and Vicki let out simultaneous groans of protest.

"If you turn yourself in," Jeff began, "we can make a deal. Immunity from prosecution, in exchange for… uh…" He trailed off, unsure what Pierce had to offer.

"I could give them more money. If you really want that," Pierce said to Annie. "It's your money, after all."

"There are so many better ways to use that money, though," Vicki interjected. "We could have a real house! I mean, you and Jeff aren't about to move in together, and you wouldn't want to live alone, so we could…" She trailed off with a hopeful shrug.

Annie felt her face tighten. It was not her money and if she started thinking of it as her money then she would undoubtedly make a mistake. "Setting that aside, a generous negotiated settlement would probably cover the tax stuff. But Pierce burned some poor grandmother's house down — that's kind of a big deal."

Jeff snapped his fingers. (Annie fought the urge to gasp delightedly. Jeff was a criminal defense attorney, of course he would have an idea!) " _Was_ it arson? Or was Pierce doing his landlady a favor by destroying a building that she was tired of? Will spoke to her, what, yesterday? He paid her off to some extent. There's still the insurance company to deal with, but I got the impression Evelyn Fleebhaven was pretty ready to make a deal. Make her a cash offer for the property. Will may have already handled that."

"Who's Will?" Vicki asked.

"My other lawyer," Pierce told her.

"I'm not your lawyer, Pierce, it'd be a conflict of interest," Jeff said. "Because of my relationship with Annie."

"Aw," said Annie, pleased.

Jeff smiled briefly at her. "I don't know the Massachusetts law off the top of my head," he continued, "but arson probably has an actual malice standard."

"A what?" Pierce asked.

Jeff ignored him. "Maybe the worst thing we could say of Pierce is not that he committed arson, but that he demolished a building without proper permits. Something that he'll happily pay the fine for. You should have gotten those permits, Pierce." Jeff clucked his tongue. "You'll have to pay the fees now, plus penalties. On top of whatever pound of flesh the IRS takes."

"That could maybe work." Annie smiled proudly at Jeff before she took another sip of watermelon margarita. "First and foremost, we need a plan that, if it became public, would not embarrass the FBI for having gone along with it."

"I suppose I could take whatever's left over after all the bills are paid and the taxman's taken his share and the policeman's benevolent association have their solid gold doughnut plates, and give it to some charity," Pierce offered.

"I'm an impoverished baker," Vicki said. "And a former dance major. I'm a charity!"

Pierce snorted. "I mean something inoffensive, like one of the sex workers' legal defense funds, or that nonprofit in Denver that pays for strippers to go to community college. Which reminds me, did I ever tell you the story of how I started taking classes at Greendale?"

"I like the charity idea," Jeff said, ignoring Pierce's question. "But we'd need an actual charity. Doctors Without Borders or Heifer International."

Pierce scowled. "You know I did all of this for you," he told Annie. "It's really kind of rude of you to turn down my gift."

"Okay, Pierce, look at it this way. It definitely wouldn't hurt my long-term career goals to go into work on Monday and tell my supervisor that I have a multimillionaire tax evader ready to turn himself in."

"But I wanted to give you money!" protested Pierce.

"Think of it as this being how I want to spend that money," Annie said.

"Maybe keep a couple of million for a rainy day?" suggested Vicki.

"Nope," said Annie, "it's got to be all or nothing."

"I get to keep the thirty thousand, though, right?"

"Sure," said Jeff.

Pierce sighed. "Fine," he said sullenly. "But I'm still going to name a Greendale scholarship after you. I was going to surprise you with it: the Annie Edison Memorial Scholarship for Recovering Pillheads, Burnouts, and Jewesses."

"We'll work on the name," Jeff assured him.


	32. And They All Lived

**Piercinald Anastasia Hawthorne** successfully bargained with the Department of Justice to avoid a prison sentence, at the cost of the bulk of his personal fortune in fees, fines, and back taxes. After the scandal of his reappearance faded from the public eye, he moved back to Greendale, though he did not resume his habit of taking community college courses. He lived modestly, and died peacefully in his sleep at the age of seventy-nine. His death certificate identified the cause as a sudden pulmonary embolism, but his (second) obituary asserted he died 'heroically saving a pregnant woman from a runaway train.'

 **William Stone** continued to work at Biddle, Heath, Sauter  & Finch, his quality of life improving dramatically once Pierce Hawthorne was no longer his client. After many years of practice, he eventually retired to a small town in western Massachusetts where he sat on his porch, drank middle-shelf scotch, and read mystery novels.

 **Victoria Christina Emmanuella Jenkins** never got to cash that check. She soon quit the bakery, selling her stake to her cousin Quendra for a few thousand dollars, sufficient to pay for her relocation from Boston back to Greendale, and then on to Arizona, where she found employment doing data entry for a medical insurance processing company. She married three times, divorced three times, and once took a trip to Paris with her local community college's French language class.

 **Neil "Real Neil" Goldman** suspended his D &D campaign shortly after his players hit ninth level, partly due to burnout and partly due to the party's spellcasters getting access to powerful plot-breaking spells like _teleport, telepathy, plane shift,_ and _scrying_. A few months later, he started a 13th Age game ostensibly to try out the system but mostly to impress this one girl who worked at the used book store. It worked out.

 **Britta Perry** stopped getting high all the time. Forced to fend for herself, she rose to the occasion and eventually secured the position of Greendale Community College's guidance counselor, which was kind of a coup inasmuch as very few community colleges even had guidance counselors. She wore glasses and looked smart, and would've hated for her life's path to be summed up as 'and eventually she married a dude and was fairly solid as a mother,' but that didn't make it not true.

 **Shirley Bennett** catered Jeff and Annie's wedding, despite having gotten out of the restaurant/bakery/catering business years earlier, because what was she going to say, no?

 **Quendra Jenkins** exhausted her savings ridding herself of her former partner. Myrtle's Bakery was on the verge of collapse when an angel investor with a knack for beignets got wind of her situation; with Mark's help, she was able to turn the business around. She kept the bakery running through good times and bad, selling it only when she was ready to retire. Long before retirement, she married a sysadmin with a remarkable beard. They raised three children before amicably divorcing after their youngest left home.

 **Mark Cashman** , in addition to partnering with Quendra, worked at Biddle Heath alongside Stone for a few years. Eventually he left private practice, and Boston, to become a judge in the 10th Judicial District of Colorado. He and his wife Eleanor remained sexually active into their sixties. Their daughter, Juliet, grew up to become a professional musician, working primarily in the orchestra for Opera Colorado; she also released eleven digital albums of jazz flute.

 **Frankie Dart** continued to keep **Craig Pelton** on as the Greendale Community College dean of student activities for years. She'd never intended to stay at GCC for more than a couple of years, just long enough to turn it around, but one thing led to another and then a decade had suddenly elapsed. Feelers went out, but she'd allowed her network of contacts to atrophy in the intervening time (she was still using LinkedIn, for God's sake). No spring chicken herself, she settled in to a long tenure as dean of the school. Under their auspices Greendale leaped from the #3 Greendale Area Community College all the way to #2.

 **Larry and Patsy McElroy** died within a few hours of one another — one of a myocardial infarction and the other of a suddenly broken heart — at the end of a lazy weekend spent watching the television and catching up on laundry.

 **Joseph Braunschweig** died on the way back to his home planet.

 **Linda Kleiman** completed her postdoctoral research, co-authoring seven technical journal articles on Scarlett's capabilities, and moved on to a series of positions in the tech industry. She eventually found love, after several more years of looking in all the wrong places (example wrong place: the basement of a semi-disused building at MIT), but it didn't take; she spent the back half of her life making new friends and meeting new people and romancing none of them, which turned out to be her preference.

 **Abed Nadir** eventually got over **Troy Barnes's** haircut. The two of them spent Troy's share of Pierce's fortune financing a commercial YouTube channel and multimedia production company, "Not Geek  & Sundry But Basically Geek & Sundry." Felicia Day eventually convinced them to change the name to "Troy and Abed Making Content."

 **Russell Borchert** was heartbroken when he found out about _The Sims_ but pushed along with his project, eventually perfecting the process of creating virtual simulacra of living beings within computer systems. Unfortunately, a fully accurate model of a human mind using Scarlett's algorithm proved to require computational power roughly equal to the theoretical capacity of every computer that could possibly be built using every atom in the solar system as raw material. Fortunately, much lower-resolution models proved useful for a variety of utilitarian tasks, and his high-resolution model of an airedale terrier (available in app form) sparked a renewed fad for virtual pets. Also, he eventually saw Peter Jackson's _Lord of the Rings_ movies, after which he telephoned a bewildered Annie to apologize for calling her Gollum.

 **Jeanne Ghiradelli** , the Butcher of Somerville, remains at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted list, though many assume she died in the massive conflagration that claimed the lives of so many innocent bystanders. No. Kidding. She went back to school and became, oh, let's say a registered nurse. Long career, some highs, some lows, died surrounded by grandchildren.

* * *

Jeff snorted awake. For a moment he didn't know where he was, the split between the dream and his waking life too severe. Then he visibly relaxed, as the reality of his situation returned to him.

"Bad dream?"

He sat up in bed and stretched a bit before turning to his wife. Annie was watching him with a bemused expression, face lit by a glowing screen — she'd been awake and reading. "No, actually. We were in Boston… watermelon margaritas with Pierce and Vicki. Remember that?"

She looked puzzled for a moment before she remembered. "El Ray del Sol, with the missing O." She smiled. "That was a fun weekend."

"I love you," Jeff told her, for something like the hundred thousandth time.

"I love you!" Annie replied, with a level of conviction still surprised him. "I wonder if that place is still open."

Yawning, he shook his head. "No. I looked it up a few years ago. It closed in 2020."

"Aw." Annie made a disappointed sound as she turned off her device. "I miss Pierce sometimes."

"He was a weird old man with an unhealthy interest in you," Jeff declared, "and that's spoken as a weird old man with a very healthy interest in you."

"He was lonely," she mused. "He was alone a long time. I didn't really know him very long, but he wanted to give me all that money…"

"We should have let him. Money is great for buying things."

"I don't want to be alone like that. Jeff, I've told you this before — you are not allowed to die before I do. I don't care that you're fifteen years older than me, that doesn't excuse you."

Jeff harrumphed. "I know, I know."

"Just you remember that." She patted him on the shoulder, then settled back into her pillow, and waited for Jeff to do the same before rolling over, draping herself across him. "Greendale was… home. Crazy, but I liked it enough to go back for two extra years."

"I thought you went back because you hadn't finished seducing me." He stroked her back with the arm that wasn't pinned under her.

"I seduced you right away, you just needed time to process it," she said drowsily. "Oh, back then I was young and hot and naive and I'd figured out that if I batted my eyes at you enough you'd do whatever I wanted… oh, wait, that last part's still true."

Jeff's chuckle rumbled under her. "Well, you're still hot."

"Flatterer."

"Only now you have a whole sexy FBI deputy assistant director, mother of two, thirtysomething MILF thing going on —"

She let out a groan of cheery protest. "I'm _forty_. We had a party. You were there!"

"You don't look it. I'm amazed you don't still get carded."

"You're only saying that because I've spent twenty years training you." She snuggled in closer to him, shifting her weight just enough to allow his pinned arm to wrap around her. "I love you."

"I love you," Jeff agreed. He lay awake for some time, listening to Annie breathe, and wondered how he'd gotten so lucky.

THE END


End file.
